I wrote in a previous post about how my blog has recently undergone an identity crisis. So far in my blog I have written mostly about writing.
But my need to write about writing was starting to wind down as early as the Christmas holidays, and I wondered what I could focus on instead. I thought I had an answer. The name of my blog was “Passionate Reason,” and I was an agnostic. My blog could be a skeptic blog.
At the beginning of the year, I wrote a few reason-related posts, but after a point I realized: aside from a few high school and college courses I did not have a particularly extensive scientific background.
I was just someone who loved reading about science and had gone through painful experiences with un-reason, in particular the religious kind. Besides, originally I had started my blog because I thought it would benefit me as a writer of fantasy novels.
Maybe, I thought, I could publish more of my fiction on my blog.
But publishing fiction on a blog is risky. In general, people who web-surf are scanners. Those who love to read would rather do it on an e-reader like the Kindle – at least I do – setting aside reading time for it rather than stumbling onto stories by accident on Twitter.
On the internet, click-bait editorializing is the rule, and the more controversial, the better. The inflammatory gist of a nonfiction post can be established quickly, whereas fiction builds slowly toward its themes. But regardless of its drawbacks, fiction can be more powerful than editorializing – in the event that someone stumbles into it.
On the internet, editorializing is so widespread, and so expected, many readers have learned to tune it out. People who are vocally impassioned about their opinions are ubiquitous. And too many of them, from trolls to news journalists, are trying to talk over everyone else.
For a while, I became part of the clamor. I wrote about my painful experiences growing up as an agnostic in the Bible Belt. I did not hold back and even shared my posts on Facebook where my conservative family members could read them, and I may have alienated a few of them.
At the time, it was important to me to share my point of view on that topic. It was important to me because I had been so afraid of doing it. Since early adolescence, I had often worried about what family members who knew me as a polite and shy chair-occupier would think if they knew I no longer believed in God.
Though my non-belief was not anything to be ashamed of, I imagined an agonizing moment of transition where in their minds I would go from being the shy polite girl they loved and thought they knew to The Enemy.
I knew I could not write as honestly in a way that made sense if I had to omit that part of who I was. I felt strongly that I had to rip off that “bandage” quickly and get it out of the way. But after I had written one of my agnostic posts, a good friend said to me, \”All your religious posts are so courageous.”
The comment threw me. Religious posts? Is that what I had been writing? I had imagined that my posts had been perfectly secular. If my posts had come across as a secular form of preaching, that had certainly not been my intent.
I did not want to be religiously non-religious. I did not want to turn my blog into a pulpit devoted to non-belief. Again, I had to ask myself: What is the point of my blog? Though no answer was forthcoming, I knew what I did not want my blog to be: another strident voice in the cacophony, shouting confident opinions into cyberspace to be applauded, criticized, or ignored.
Opinion pieces do have their place and many are beautifully done, but I sometimes get the feeling that no one is really listening to anyone else, unless the opinions presented conform to those the reader already has.
Thus, writing more fiction on my blog seemed like a more effective way to say what I really thought, felt and saw. Fiction is more of a reflection than an assertion. Its specific and vivid detail allows what is too often lacking in editorial pieces: a nuanced point of view that celebrates the world as the intricate place that it really is.
A point of view is not the same as an opinion. While many people wear their opinions like armor, a point of view is flexible. As in the physical world, a point of view can change as the writer moves through life.
Fiction is more about point of view than opinion, and does not usually demand that the reader pick a team. Many bellicose assertions said in opinion pieces would fall apart in fiction, such as “People who believe in God are dumb.” I have seen this statement many times in blog posts.
But if I were to write a story in which all my Christian characters were bumbling fools, and all of my atheist characters were brilliant and virtuous, the story would not seem real. It would produce bad fiction whose propaganda was transparent. A story where all atheist characters are evil to the core and all Christians thoroughly virtuous is more familiar, but to any thinking person it would also reveal itself to be agenda-driven and dishonest.
That is not to say that fiction is always objective. I could not finish reading Oliver Twist because of the anti-Semitism embodied in the absurd caricature of a flat, “dirty,” and purely villainous Jewish character. Like nonfiction, fiction has been used to reinforce cultural biases, sell products, exalt leaders, and promote religious belief systems.
But using fiction for purposes of propaganda is not my goal. Propaganda is about selling an opinion, usually dishonestly, for purposes of manipulation. What I want to share is a point of view. I want to be honest, and if I am honestly mistaken, that will – I hope – change naturally as I move and absorb new information, and my point of view changes.
I still want my blog to remain true to its name: “Passionate Reason.” But rather than making every post an argument, I want to focus on simply reflecting back what I see from the point of view where I currently stand.
No point of view is complete. But I like to think that mine, as much as any other, has something meaningful to say, and fiction is a powerful mirror. One example keeps coming back to me: After all my labored writing about how I became agnostic, there was little response overall, and if anyone took offense, no one expressed it.
It was my silly short fiction story “The Final Word” that struck home with the force of a lightning bolt and drew shocked disapproval from family members. Although disapproval was not what I was shooting for, it suggests to me that many people have learned to tune out the militant clamor of opinion articles. In a click bait world, the subtlety of fiction may also be its greatest strength.
Editorials are like abstract sales pitches for opinions, but what fiction offers is a kind of dream. From it a reader is allowed to identify what resonates with her own experiences and disregard the parts that ring false. Sometimes it is the artifice that offends, but sometimes it is the parts that appear true that strike most painfully.
While fiction can and often has been used as propaganda to manipulate, observant readers can usually identify when they are being preached to. To be as powerful as it can be, fiction must ring true.
My goal in writing is to reflect the world through my own imperfect lens, and let the reader decide what to make of it.
“Converting” others to skepticism is too narrow a task for my blog, but I will continue to share my point of view. Toward that end, I will be posting more fiction than before, but my general approach to my blog has worked well for me and I will stick to it: to write what I care about in a way that I find fun. And if that happens to include passion, reason, banana peels, or uber-fluffy cats, then I will find a place for them here.