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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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