Hello Readers.
I hope you've enjoyed the blog so far. We know you're reading because we've been getting feedback. Thanks for keeping us in check. A couple of weeks ago we mentioned a book by Virginia Woolf entitled A Room of One's Own, and we mistakenly called it a novel. It's not. In fact it was first a lecture, and it later became a book.
I love that you called us out on that, because it emphasizes the idea that literature is a community. That idea is a large part of 5x5.
But it also brought up an interesting point. The issue with the word "novel" was that a novel is, by definition, fiction. Of course, you can have nonfiction novels, but then you have to have the word "nonfiction" in front to let the readers know that it isn't a traditional novel. It's a nonfiction novel.
Maybe you disagree with those definitions, and that would be fine. I'm not trying to argue semantics. The point is that there is fact and there is fiction, and then there is everything in the middle. I may go as far as to say that fact and fiction are ideas at two ends of a spectrum and that these ideas are never actually realized. Everything contains both fact and fiction, based on perspective, so everything falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Where exactly a story or a single statement falls in this spectrum can cause all sorts of debates. Remember James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces.
5x5 publishes fiction and creative nonfiction. So, theoretically, the fictional stories are very, very close to the fictional side of the spectrum. The creative nonfiction can fall pretty much anywhere in the middle, but the idea is that it falls much closer to the fact side. If you get too close to fact, however, you end up with journalism. We're not looking for something unbiased, if such a thing even exists. We want your bias, your creativity, your tidbits of fictional elements.
Only the writer is going to have the best idea of where his or her story falls on the spectrum, but we're all allowed to speculate and judge and make assumptions.
The debate over what's fiction and what's fact could go on forever. I'm willing to set that aside and take each story for what it is. A story.
And we want to read your stories. This is the last week to submit work for the Illumination themed issue. Please do. Our community needs you.
-Bradley
