Fiction is a funny animal oh-so-different from its more staid cousin nonfiction. Nonfiction has form shape and color just by virtue of its topic. An article about herbivores is automatically going to sprout from — well herbivores! So you interview a couple of farmers a zoologist do a Google search get a statement from Daisy and voilà! An article appears.
Then there’s fiction.
It’s a foray into the unknown a communion with creativity. And completely maddeningly dependent on inspiration. Which is why it’s so scary to write fiction on assignment. I speak from personal experience as you may have surmised. And if I sound a bit on the raw haunted side it’s because of a recent brush with fiction fright. A month and a half from now when all of you eagerly rip the plastic off the Pesach edition devouring its contents like Schmerling Pesach chocolate do spare a sigh for the courageous writers among us who strove to supply you with your literary fare come what may.
And of that which may come perhaps nothing is more fearsome to the down-to-the-wire writer than … nothing at all.
An eerie blank nothingness. Bleak dreary shades of gray. Here and there a thought flits by and is quickly extinguished.
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