author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Still haven't finished Chapter 7. I really have to give Amy something more useful to do than twiddle her thumbs and wait for the end of the chapter. I'm one sentence away from getting her and Todd into that bit of necessary conversation--the one, in fact, that necessitates the switch in narrator, because it reveals things that Brian is not to know--during which Russ and then Brian will interrupt them, closing the chapter with a lovely piece of brutality we'll all enjoy (if guiltily) because the victim is Russ. I'll have to go back through the Novel So Far and make sure that Russ has been adequately presented as That Guy You Love To Hate, so as to best make way for the Schadenfreude. The effect I'm looking for is "Finally, that asshole is getting the beating he deserves! ...Wait. Ok, enough beating now. No, really. Stop! I don't want to see him die...."

Which all sounds very fiendish and manipulative. Probably because it is.

From time to time it occurs to me to worry that, as a writer, I'm setting myself up to be mistrusted by the community. Whatever community. Writers of fiction make their livings telling lies, after all--telling lies and pulling readers' strings. And yes, those lies stand in the service of Truth, and the string-pulling is exactly why the reader returns to a good book again and again, but still. The power to manipulate the heart and mind by use of words alone is a little alarming. Are those who have that power objects of suspicion? I don't claim to have that power in any significant degree as yet, but I'm reaching for it. I wonder if I'll regret achieving it.

Maybe the choice to use such a power to create works of unabashed fiction, as opposed to running for office or charming congregations into mass Koolaid imbibery, is enough to restore a writer's credibility. Unlike the corrupt politician or charismatic megalomaniac preacher, we're not trying to fob off our lies as fact.

Well, with the exception of folks like, I dunno, Carlos Casteneda or something.