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Stacking Stones
​A Creative Craft Blog

From the mind of Jason Kapcala comes an eclectic journal dedicated to the study of creative writing, rock music, tailgating, and other miscellany. The musings, meditations, contemplations, and ruminations expressed here are my own unless otherwise indicated. Please feel free to share your comments, thoughts, and opinions, but do so respectfully and intelligently.
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Strange Bedfellows (Part IV)

2/18/2017

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Fiction's Enduring Value

Part 4 of a 4-part series
Painting of a Hand
It’s hard to sell people on reading when your best pitch is “there’s no good reason for you to read this book, other than that it may make you feel things that you have been trying hard to suppress.” 
Vertical Divider
The meaning of fiction is, I believe, the grand and glorious leap we make, both as we speak and as we listen, from our own lives to those of others. The meaning of fiction is empathy, our ability to recognize ourselves in others, others in ourselves.
―John Gregory Brown

If asked, most people would probably guess that empathy is an ancient concept dating back to the Hebrews or the Greeks or the Romans, that it arose from religion or philosophy. However, the concept of empathy is little more than a century old, and the word “empathy” did not enter our lexicon until the early 20th century when it was used to describe the imaginative act of projecting oneself onto a work of art.

That’s right, empathy originated with art. . . .

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Strange Bedfellows (Part III)

2/16/2017

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The Subversive Art of Empathy: A Case Study

​Part 3 of a 4-part series.
Finch
To say that [Harper] Lee never set out to write a book about social justice and racial equality doesn’t strike the ear quite right. She lived a life in which social justice and racial equality formed an important an inescapable part of her lived identity. And yet, Lee chose not to write To Kill a Mockingbird as a philosophical treatise on injustice. 
Vertical Divider
Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties--all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name's Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion--these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.
―David Foster Wallace

​It’s difficult (maybe impossible) to explain to someone who doesn’t write that the development of characters is not something a fiction writer enters into lightly. I can’t speak for all writers, but the characters I've created feel very real to me, and I’m not ashamed to admit that there are plenty of days when I think about them, wonder how they are doing, forget that they aren’t actually living and breathing in the world beyond the page.

I realize that sounds made up—like some airy fairy comment artists make--but it's true.

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Strange Bedfellows (Part II)

2/14/2017

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IF not Truth, Then What?

Part 2 of a 4-part series.
Hats
If the story, before it’s ever written, starts with an irrefutable truth, the act of writing becomes a mere attempt to spread that truth by creating a product out of it—an approach that is antithetical to artistry . . . .
We have our Arts so we don’t die of Truth.
―Ray Bradbury

Vertical Divider
To be successful as a writer of realist fiction, you must be capable of wearing a couple different hats: the reader hat and the writer hat. You must be able to switch back and forth between these hats, as needed. Reading and writing are both acts of creation, but they approach the same subject matter from opposite directions.

This approach is not transferable.

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Strange Bedfellows (Part I)

2/11/2017

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Is it still socially responsible to write fiction?

Part 1 of a 4-part series.
Frozen Sea
We should demand Truth from our political leaders, our legal system, and our press. It's a value we should uphold in our religious institutions and our schools. We should teach it to our children, and embrace it as part of our personal code.

But we should not make Truth our defense for writing fiction. . . .
A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
                     ―Franz Kafka

Vertical Divider
It’s understatement to say that we live in politically complicated times. And though it has been postulated that, out of struggle, great art is born, our current cultural climate poses undeniable challenges for poets and writers. A new president has taken office—one who does not read and does not write (a sharp contrast to his literate predecessor [2]). To top it all off, there’s reason to believe that the new administration will discontinue support for writing and the arts. For this reason (and a myriad of others), now may be the most important time in our nation’s history for writers and artists to speak out creatively and intellectually.

But where does this leave writers of realist fiction?

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Some Thoughts on MFA Backlash and the Article that Angered the Internet

3/7/2015

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Picture
Every once in a while I’ll come across an article (or have one sent to me by writer friends) that inspires me to put together a blog entry. Nine times out of ten, it is because the author has written something valuable—offering an artist’s insight that I find educational or illuminating; I want to engage with it intellectually and artistically, and I’d like to pass it along to my friends, my readers, and my students, in the hopes that they might feel inspired to enter into that larger discussion, as well.

This isn't one of those times.

This is that tenth time where I find myself so irritated by the wrongheadedness and pretentiousness of an article that I feel the obligation as a writer, reader, teacher, and scholar of craft, to provide some counter-point. . . .


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Must Read! -- This State of Literature

10/22/2012

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As you'll recall from a few posts back, we talked about subject matter and how we can write about our lives even when we feel like the lives we've lived aren't terribly exciting. We also talked about fraudulence and how that stems from the fear that we might not have anything exciting enough to write about.

Dan Shewan takes on these issues and more in his recent post, "This State of Literature 2: Secrets and Lies." I especially like his points about the contract a nonfiction writer has with him/herself. 

It's a must read for anyone who is new to creative nonfiction (especially those working on memoirs). Check it out!
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Fictive Devices

9/29/2012

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Yes, it's a double-header this week folks!

A few posts back, I mentioned what I call "fictive devices"--creative liberties borrowed from the world of fiction that might find their way into your creative nonfiction essays (if you so choose). Unlike what we've been discussing in the previous posts about "Fraudulence," these techniques probably won't offend anyone's sense of fairness and ethics:

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Personal Histories

9/28/2012

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Last week, one of our readers, Dominique, raised a very interesting question about “History,” so I've decided to dedicate this week’s blog entry to responding to that. (If you haven’t read it already, go check out her entry in the comments section of the last blog entry. It’s well worth the read!)

In particular, Dominique mentions a quote from Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism by Hayden White: “We do not live stories, even if we give our lives meaning by retrospectively casting them in the form of stories.” The question, as I understanding it (and feel free to correct me in the comments, if I’m wrong about this) has to do with history—personal and otherwise—what our obligation is to document history and whether or not “history” as a term is preferable to truth.

We can claim something to be historically accurate without commenting one way or the other on its “truthfulness” in the larger philosophical sense. (Much in the same way we can claim that a person possesses knowledge without commenting one way or the other on whether that person possesses “wisdom,” as well.) So, in that sense, the term History may have a leg up—it seems more objective. On the other hand, objectivity is really not the goal of creative nonfiction. I’d argue that subjectivity is the goal. Telling the story you have to tell, the way you have to tell it, filtered unapologetically through your understanding and perspective. When I hear the word History, I think of textbooks, or else biography rather than memoir—pieces that have more to do with documenting verifiable fact than focusing on personal perspective and its attendant intangibles (feelings, opinions, emotions).

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My Issues With "Truth" (Most of Them Largely Semantic)

9/19/2012

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Okay, so in my previous post about the differences between Nonfiction and Creative Nonfiction, I suggested that what makes creative nonfiction unique is its use of fictive devices. I also suggested that the way those devices are employed is more important in some respects than supposed “truth.”  (Disclaimer: I write fiction almost exclusively, so I am probably biased.) 

I can imagine a statement like that ruffling some people’s feathers (assuming anyone is out there reading), so let’s talk about that position a little.

It might be good to start out with a definition: When I say truth, I mean accordance to “the way things really happened” in one’s personal history. I don’t mean, matters of public record that we might look up on in a textbook or almanac (such as, is the Sears Tower 1,729 feet high or 1,279 feet high?). I think, when it comes to factual details like that, it’s our obligation to make every effort to get our “moons in the right skies” (to steal a quote from Eudora Welty), if we expect to be taken seriously as people with something intelligent to say.

But what about those personal histories? What are our obligations? It’s a tricky question, one that rolls back on itself the more you try to talk about it, I think.

I’ll be clear here in stating my bias: I start getting twitchy whenever I hear writers talk about “truth.” You hear it all the time—that nonfiction may not tell the objective Truth (capital “T”) but that it tells a truth (lowercased “t”). Truth is truth, I say. There are no variations. The moment you qualify it, it’s no longer truth by definition. It’s subjective interpretation. I hear fiction writers claim that they “lie to tell the truth” or that they are striving to convey an “emotional truth.” I don’t buy any of that. Lying to tell the truth? Give me a break. To do that, you’d have to know what the truth is. And when people claim to know the truth, my bullshit detector starts beeping. Maybe some other writers—writers far better than I am—feel confident that they have discovered truths, and maybe they feel obligated to share them with the world. Who am I to say?

All I can say with any certainty is that I have no such truths to tell. And I’m not particularly interested in acquiring any. When I sit down to write a personal essay--which, admittedly, I don't do often--I only have two motivations for sharing my story:

          1. I think it's interesting enough to put out there. I live under the assumption that, if it interests me, it might also interest 
              someone else.

          2. I hope my story makes someone else feel less alone, even if only for a few minutes.

If you're looking for company, I might be able to help. But if you want universal truth, moral lessons, someone to pass judgment on himself or others, I'm the wrong writer for you.

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    Jason Kapcala

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