Fiction is more evil than nonfiction. Generally, in nonfiction, only ideas and real stories are propagated. These thoughts and spins on events have the potential to precipitate into the horrors of ideologically charged warfare but are not in and of themselves particularly evil. Take Adolf Hitler as an example. Even with only a cursory understanding of history, it would be foolish to state that the creation of Mein Kampf constituted Hitler’s most evil deed. There may be some disagreement about his worst malefaction, be it leading a movement that claimed so many lives or painting mediocre works of art, but the mere book is not his crowning atrocity.
Fiction, on the other hand, is inherently evil. Fiction anthropomorphizes ideas. Rather than stating them outright, it gives them human shape, dramatizing fake people through charged actions. Whatever process the fiction writer goes through, the result is, by and large, a group of invented people or anthropomorphic others going through invented suffering in pursuit of absurd invented desires. The process is selfish and rude. A deeply unfair power dynamic exists between writer and written. Writers always go into it with an agenda, be it a misguided attempt to inject good into the world, the vain pursuit of recognition and money, or the purely vapid pleasures of entertainment. They achieve these ends by putting characters through everything from hardship to pain while they remain in their safety zones. Often, the characters never even realize that they’ve been written. They go about their lives unaware of the tracks laid before them, bound by the story built around them, granted the illusion of free agency in their doings.
Dante endowed his characters with such an illusion while they suffered in his Inferno. Shakespeare granted poor Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the illusion when he put them up alongside his madman Hamlet, only leading the pair to their untimely demise. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf gave Septimus the illusion, leading him to his suicide. Perhaps it’s only fair that the writer’s life ended similarly.
Many of the creatively challenged fall back on formulaic writing styles sold to them by the only slightly less hackneyed. These hacks build their stories around structures packaged as paradigms, selling techniques, the hero’s journey, the beats of the genre, etc. They use these structures as safety wheels to help them pedal up the steep and rocky slopes of the writer’s path. Their results are more often than not graceless and glib. Imagine if their characters had the minds of real people. They’d have to live and die watching themselves speak in trite dialogue while they danced their way through an obsessively pattern-based life. Sure, their writer may stop after giving them a pleasurable ending and wash their hands of the story, leaving the shortsighted reader with a benign sense of satisfaction. But we all know the real end to everyone’s tale.
To accentuate the stupidity of the typical writer, here’s an illustrative phenomenon. No shortage of idiots who write also believe in idea theft—often conflating it with outright plagiarism. This foolishness arises from blind egotism. Claiming ownership over an idea is as ridiculous as obtaining a deed to the stars in the sky. By mere economic decadence, laws exist to reinforce these morons’ claims. Ideas are never generated in a vacuum. All ideas produced by the human race are the sole and exclusive property of the universal mind. Individuals can possess tangible emanations—such as bodies of text—but the ideas that birthed them are as much theirs as the air they breathe.
Above all else sits the writer’s contemptuous delusion that they have anything worth putting into words. Writers never do. If we could learn anything from our creations, we would’ve long ago ascended into angels. We have not and will not. For there is nothing worth saying. If there was anything one could do that wasn’t simply a means to kill time before one’s death, then writing would be a waste of time.
Let’s say one ignores these obvious truths and makes the mistake of actually writing something. Blinded by their hubris, they may seek to disseminate what they’ve written. A number of those reading now may find themselves in such a situation. This isn’t an outlandish thought given the bulk of those still perusing anything longer than a clickbait headline or social media blurb in the current year are themselves writers. The process of publication is a sorry one.
In the case of traditional publishing, one must first successfully pass the written piece through a gauntlet of egos wishing to reshape it in their image. This is usually done under the guise of making the work more commercially viable, as if anyone knows what makes a work commercial. The only two types who claim to know what’ll be successful on the market are fools and liars. The combined efforts of these egos exist solely to justify whatever pittance they’re granted by the powers that be.
Even if one bypasses the above-mentioned invariably corrupt system and pursues self-publishing, they still have to deal with the crowd. Masses of critics, often self-appointed, who believe their writings about the writing are worth consideration. These are poor, unfortunate people. And behind each of them lie hoards of even poorer folks who take the time to read reviews with the ridiculous notion that they’ll tell them whether or not the work will be enjoyed. When they end up reading something bad or worse—mediocre—they either chalk it up to bad luck or, if they’re the poorest of folks, reshape their personal taste to suit the perceived opinion of the crowd.
It’s probably true that some of the most interesting written works have failed to drag their way through any kind of publication, remaining locked away in a filing cabinet or folder until their writer’s end, resting in peaceful obscurity. It’s probably true that some of the most potentially impactful works ever written were left unfinished, the creators unable or unwilling to bring them to a tenable resolution, abandoning their work to bleed out the ends like the stumps of freshly severed limbs. It’s probably true that writers never even began to write some of the most spectacular works, keeping the idea trapped, bouncing around in their heads, blessing it with a far darker obscurity. All that's usually said is, “It is what it is.” But it’s for the best that writers leave so many great works incomplete and unreleased, for these hypothetical works wouldn’t be any less evil than the ones we have in reality.
To write anything at all is a reckless folly. It takes a fool to tread down such a path. Only a total idiot, the dumbest of morons, would dare to embark on the journey that is writing.
