Morals

I'm doing a lot of writing about writing lately.  Which I know bothers some people significantly.  Then again, most of the people I know who have issues with such things don't read my blog anyway because they're generally the same people who have issues with the angst and controversy that I seem to allow free reign in my writing and my life.  Anyhow, this is going to be more writing about writing.  Feel free to tune out if it doesn't interest you.

From elementary school, you're taught that stories have a moral and a purpose.  One of the questions most commonly asked of children after they've read something is "what did you learn?"  Well what if there was nothing to learn?  Not every story comes complete with lessons built in to educate the youth of the world.  The stories that are most like real life don't have any resounding morals built into them but are rather stories for the sake of being stories.

That's the thing with real life, though.  You do learn things as you go, but they don't come in neat little packages.  It's hard to judge the beginning and end of an event when you learned x or y.  In some cases, sure, it's not particularly hard.  But on the whole, looking at the expanse of a life, how do you divide that into distinct sections each with their own lessons and morals packaged in?  You don't.  It doesn't work that way.  You live an you learn.

That's why writing fiction with a purpose was always so hard for me.  I started seeing things from an existentialist standpoint quite some time ago.  That's when I started to doubt that little clause about morals and purposes.  If life doesn't have a purpose, why would any story?  This is why so much of my writing is in little purpose-less blurbs that float around and do nothing.  I don't see life as having a purpose, I see it as a puzzle composed of little pieces called events.  So that's how I write it.  Because, in case you didn't read my last post, I believe in writing the truth.