After my post about my mixed thoughts on both traditional and self-publishing, I have continued to think about the purpose of what I do and yesterday, I had a big thought.
When I wrote Mob Rule Learning, I did so because the topic is important to me. I believe strongly in the power of a group to do amazing, revolutionary things. Our country was created by a group of passionate people who came together and made something new, a mob passionate for freedom.
I wrote that book because the idea has power. When people tell me they like Mob Rule Learning, I smile and am happy knowing that they understand the power of people too. I thought if anyone ever read my fiction and liked it, I would have the same kind of happiness. It is the happiness like-minded people find in a good conversation.
I think I vastly underestimated my own feelings about fiction and how that would tie into my feelings about my writing.
Something happens to me when I read fiction that does not happen when I read non-fiction. Every once in awhile you read one of those books. You know the ones. The ones where you fall down the rabbit hole and you never want out. The ones where you are afraid to get to the end because you will miss the characters. The ones that make your heart beat faster. The books that make you fall in love and you want to read over and over and over. The ones you stay up all night reading and then have troubling going to sleep because the whole thing is there in your head.
Those books.
Perhaps some of you feel that way about non-fiction, but for me, it is fiction.
One day, I want someone to fall down the rabbit hole into a world I made. I want them to fall in love with the characters from my head. I want to give that to someone. Even if this only ever happens once and even if I never know, that is the reason I write fiction.
It is not the only reason. The characters in my head never leave me alone until I write them down and I am a much happier person when I have a little time to write, but those are not the secret-wish-in-my-heart reason.
I want to give back to the world once what I have been given many, many times over. I am, after all, just a bibliophile.
–Jane, always reading