Which one are you? I’ve noticed a common trend at work. You either fall into the fiction category, or the non-fiction one.

“Fiction writing is no better than selling your dreams.”

That comment was made today at work by a colleague after discussing why writing fiction is a “waste of time”. I must point out that said colleague and I were debating why I read fiction and why he chooses to read only non-fiction. And it got me thinking.

Fiction for the most part, is a means of escape, both for the reader and the writer. It allows you to go outside the limits of your daily life and enter a world in which anything can happen. But, what is fiction? Isn’t the “made up” stuff in these fiction books based on something real? Fiction doesn’t mean it’s fake, or imagined, or any less real – it’s the way it’s put together that makes it fiction. The feelings you get from these books, the emotions they evoke in you, through the characters or the writing style, the moral – doesn’t that make it real? Isn’t that enough?

So what if people feel the need to escape for an hour or two everyday, engrossed in a book? Fiction writing doesn’t mean that it should fail to educate us – there are other things we can learn from a story that doesn’t have to include facts or real life events.

Imagination, one of the strongest advantages we have over other species, to imagine, to create, to dream… why shouldn’t we want to explore this? Why shouldn’t we want to share this with others?

Does reading something “not real” make me any less, well, just any less?

I’ve decided there are two types of readers in this world, them and me. Reading is a personal choice, so are opinions. Enough said.