November 25th, 2011 / 7:07 pm
 Snippets
—

Fictionitis |fick shun eye tus|

noun

a disease of the frontal lobe that obliterates the impulse to write fiction almost before (in the time-space continuum) the impulse is acted upon; the foiling of grand plans and even grander fantasies as a result of said disease: I contracted fictionitis minutes after conceiving of a fiction-writing-for-poets series on HTMLGiant; I will wash my mouth out with soap, but it won’t cure the disease.

10 Comments

  1. November 26th, 2011 / 2:06 pm MJ—

      I had to read this a few times to ‘get it’. But I think I ‘get it’ now. You thought you’d give fiction writing a try, but now you’re like ehh, naw, I’m good. Right?

  2. November 26th, 2011 / 2:54 pm deadgod—

      Well, Alexis had (still has?) a “fiction-writing-for-poets series on HTMLGiant” going:  FictionSpeak (click her name on and scroll down for the two installments).  I’m guessing she’s decided to bag the series and this snippet is her apologia.  If so, it wouldn’t “suck”–what the hell; destroying joy and love sucks–, but it might be ‘too bad’.

  3. November 26th, 2011 / 3:11 pm Taylor Napolsky—

      I understood it perfectly well.

  4. November 26th, 2011 / 6:13 pm Guestagain—

      if poets have an antennae for truth it makes sense that consciously pursuing fiction might cause this, the anecdote could be legend building and mythologizing

  5. November 26th, 2011 / 8:24 pm reynard—

      i hope you find a cure, alexis! a lot of my favorite novels were written by poets, such as the enormous room, a nest of ninnies, ulysses, the great american novel (wcw), the notebooks of malte laurids brigge, & the autobiography of alice b. toklas

  6. November 26th, 2011 / 10:50 pm Laura Carter—

      put away the soap!!!!

  7. November 27th, 2011 / 2:55 am deadgod's frustrated editor—

      Many poets develop fictionitis because they’re jealous of the attention fiction writer’s receive relative to poets, which is obviously a bad approach. 

  8. November 27th, 2011 / 2:56 am deadgod's frustrated editor—

      writers

  9. November 27th, 2011 / 7:00 am MJ—

       And then you woke up. #novelistsarebearmachines

  10. November 27th, 2011 / 2:14 pm MJ—

       Yeah I know G. But I had to read it a few times to understand that.