2 | The Writer • April 2020
FROM THE EDITOR
NICKI PORTER
Keep writing,Nicki Porter
Senior Editor
@nickimporterFreefall
Once upon a time, I was a child prodigy of bad
fiction.
And I mean bad fiction. Awful, wretched,
bore-you-to-tears fiction.
My characters were all jaw-droppingly beautiful,
with waist-length hair, striking features, and the
personality of limp cardboard. They had achingly
long conversations about the weather and what
they would wear to school that day. They existed in
settings that were described in excruciating detail,
down to the precise color of the floorboards. They
occupied sentences that were regularly 30 words
longer than the average American attention span.
And nothing ever happened to them. Nothing.
They sat contentedly in an abundance of adjectives
and adverbs, with nary a plot in sight.
And then, happily, I discovered nonfiction,
which was the equivalent of the world’s worst
bowler discovering bumpers at their local bowl-
ing alley. Suddenly, I had facts and figures to keep
me in line. I had true-life events to help me stay
on course. I didn’t have to invent dialogue. I
didn’t have to make anything up. All I had to do
was research, listen, and consider the truth care-
fully. The plot points were already on the map; all
I had to do was connect them.
So I began describing myself as a nonfiction
writer, one who dabbled in poetry, but one who
could never-ever write fiction, of course. Making
stuff up? Bah, that wasn’t for me. Truthtelling was
my art, and I’d happily leave conjuring characters
and plot out of thin air to more imaginative souls.
Then one day, a perfect idea struck, as sure
and quick as lightning. I couldn’t get it out of my
mind. I’d sit down to edit a piece, and the idea
would pop up, waving at me from the margins. I’d
pick up the phone to call a source, and the ideawould whine in my ear. I thought about it while
washing dishes. I thought about it on the train. I
thought about it at 3 in the morning. And,
mostly, I thought about how I really, really, really
wished that idea would shut its damn mouth and
leave me alone.
Because the idea was fiction. And I didn’t write
fiction. And if I did write fiction, I most certainly
wouldn’t write in the idea’s genre. But the idea
didn’t shut up. It refused to leave me alone. So one
day, I sat down, opened a new document, and
wrote my first sentence of fiction in 15 years.
It was hard. So I wrote another one. It was
weird. So I wrote another. And another. And
another. And then, suddenly, it was easy, effort-
less, as if someone knocked down the barriers
and pushed my giant bowling-ball of an idea hur-
tling down a cliff. It was wild and scary and fast
and dangerous and oh boy howdy it was fun.
Fiction was fun! Who knew? And after I wrote
and imagined and wrote some more, I discovered
my nonfiction suddenly felt more fun and free,
too. I was a little more playful with structure or
voice. I experimented a little more. I stuck with
the facts, mind you, but I became a little bolder in
the telling. I had conjured an entire fictional
world into existence! What else could I do? What
other mountains could I climb?
Readers, please let my bowling-ball fiction freef-
all be a gentle nudge this month to color outside
the lines a bit. A lot can change in a decade. Maybe
it’s time to give the old essay another chance. Or
start the first page of that memoir you swore you’d
never write. Begin your very first short story. Let
this year be the year you give that genre you
thought you hated another go. You might surprise
yourself – and you might even have fun doing it.