The theme this week is writing about a culture not your own, how to best go about it, or even how fully it can even be done. It’s a wonderful topic, and as other writers have tackled it throughout the week, there’s been some really interesting ideas tossed around. That I’m going to have to steal. I’d say “appropriate” or “synthesize”, but I really mean “steal.” Now I’ll try to at least use them as a launch pad into something else, but no promises. Why did I pick Friday again? Oh, yeah, because I’m a procrastinator and it gave me the illusion of having more time to write these things, when in actuality, it only did that the very first week. Now we’re all cycling together. I digress.
An uber smart professor I once had said the purpose of fiction was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. He freely admitted he pillaged this (not to be confused with appropriated) from another professor, who in turn probably ripped somebody else off. Some people credit Finley Dunne a century ago, others give attribution elsewhere, but the origins don’t matter, just the truth of the thing. And as far as pithy little gems go, I’d say this pretty well captures the purpose of fiction, good fiction anyway. (more…)
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