2013 New Year's Resolution & Site Revival

Seeing as 2012 came and went without seeing my primary fictional project - a science fiction short story - unfinished, I've resolved to devote 2013 to getting that project out the door, along with several others that have been on the backburners for too long.  This blog is one of them.

I started this blog hoping to share some of the things I've learned, having labored in earnest on fictional matters for nearly 15 years.  This endeavor was doomed from the start, for at least two reasons.

First, despite the 15 years I've dabbled in the craft, I'm still a novice.  I have no fictional publications to my name.  I have no formal education in fictional matters outside of minoring in creative writing in college and taking the odd drawing course or two.  While I have uncovered the random pearl of creative wisdom here and there along the way, I'm about as responsible for them as a broken clock is for being right twice every day.  Like the clock, my only prevailing virtue is being here, day after day.

Given that I'm still stumbling around the subject matter myself, taking on the mantle - as I'd originally intended - of an blogging advisor is perhaps a bigger bite than I'm equipped to chew.  This may be why the entries I'd hoped to post on writing tips, strategies, etc. halted so quickly after they started.  Despite my efforts and aspirations, I am at this point worse than than unpublished fiction writer: I'm an unfinished one.  I don't even have a finished draft of anything that I'd even send out to collect an obligatory smattering of rejection letters.

A logical conclusion to this realization might be to pack up Fictional Matters and put it on hiatus - if not for good, than at least until I get a few publications - or, heck, even a truly finished story or two - under my belt. But another of my 2012 milestones was teaching a writing course as an adjunct law school professor, an undertaking for which I was marginally better qualified.  Teaching for the first time showed me that you don't have to be perfect to impart important lessons.  You just have to be willing - and, like the broken clock, you at least have to be there.

The second reason that my initial efforts were doomed from the start is that I have always loathed airing personal details publicly.  This raises an inherent - and some might say irreconcilable - conflict with the blogging manifesto: to put something out there, for the wide open public of the internet to consider as they will.  It also runs contrary to the creative impulse that underlies all fiction: the only way to make something fictitious matter to an audience is to imbue it with enough truth to attain a requisite level of verisimilitude, and, in doing so, achieve a certain degree of catharsis for creator and audience alike.  The only way to do that - as far as I know - is to delve deep into the truths that you find buried within yourself, and draw them out into the light.  To achieve fiction's purpose - whether you're writing a story, painting a picture, or molding a sculpture - you have to reveal some trembling, vulnerable part of yourself for all the world to see, to judge, but above all, to understand.

I think the reason I hate to share personal details is tied to the reason I am an unfinished writer: I want my works to be perfect before the audience lays eyes on them.  I want to be able to polish away the rough edges, to smooth over the cracks before anyone can notice them.  But keeping so much of the process sequestered in this way, bottling it up so that the pressure builds into a terrible and paralyzing inertia, has slowed everything down.  In life, there is no more precious a commodity than time.  But worse than the time wasted in this stasis are the opportunities squandered; specifically, the opportunities to lay out the mistakes of my endeavors and learn from them, but more than that, to make those mistakes and their resulting lessons available for the benefit of others struggling, like me, with the siren-song allure of creation.

And so I welcome the new year with a renewed resolution.  Fictional Matters will see frequent - no less so than monthly - updates that will catalog my efforts, my triumphs (if any), but most importantly of all, my failures.  It will serve as a kind of notebook for my fictional endeavors, laying bare as many steps in my process as I can bear to share.  The end goal will be to spur things on, and hold me accountable to my undertakings, so that when I'm in a position to look back on 2013, I'll be able to list one or two projects that will at least have been finished by then.  And if the steps in that journey can be of help to those brave internet searchers who happen upon this blog, then so much the better.