This post continues my thoughts on writing what I believe and writing what I love. In the first part I explained that it includes reading what I love, and that includes long novels. This is partly an artist’s manifesto – that term is still too grand – and partly a look behind the curtain or under the hood. It is the back story of stories I have written, am writing, and live.
This is the second of three parts.
What I Believe
I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that what I want to write is born of and sustained by what I believe, not just what I love. Among the many things I believe, here are the ones I most want to write about.
I believe there is good in virtually everyone. Likewise, there is a measure of evil in virtually everyone. “God and the devil are fighting,” said Dmitri Karamazov, “and the battlefield is the [human heart].”
I believe that good can and often does triumph in an individual heart and in the world at large, and it will continue to do so in the future, more often than not.
Based on long and varied experience with people I didn’t think were interesting at first, I believe there is something interesting in everyone – something worthy of our notice and reflection, and often enough our admiration.