A New Literary Genre, Lucid Fiction

This is the time for this new literary genre, Lucid Fiction, to erupt on the scene, because it reflects the paradigm of the moment in a way that literature is not doing fully enough so far.

As a writer, myself, I find my fiction relatively easily placed in journals with good reputations, with an appreciative audience, and my acceptance rate is far better than the reported average for successful writers.

However, I also find many rejections that say "there's no plot, dear." Or, "We like work with actual character"or "this is more like a poem than fiction, more lyrical than action oriented." Or, "we never really find out what is going on and it remains ambiguous." Or, "We don't want characters who are paranoid about conspiracies, and we certainly can't take aliens seriously." Or, "nothing really happens with that kind of magical synchronicity, so it's not realistic."

Well, exactly my point. Life doesn't always follow the formulaic plot arc, and we don't always find out what is going on, and really, it all takes place in our head anyway, theoretically. I don't like to encourage the idea that humans are limited by our skins, by what we are told we are capable of by the mass media. For example, I know that rishis and saints have levitated, that some people can bend spoons, that many people can heal by their minds, that people write each other emails at the same moment every day who haven't seen each other for years.

And being aware of the global conspiracy and being well educated on the subject of aliens doesn't make people weirdos. Why shouldn't people who face the conspiracy head on be represented in fiction and taken seriously? So, I like those rejection letters, am tickled by them, and they let me know I'm onto something good. Because, really, how many other writers have had the same thing happen? Your plot is different from the formula, you experiment with form and identity in ways beyond the understanding of the editors, and you look around you and see that things are not what they are portrayed to be in the mass media? Writing about those things in Sci Fi doesn't appeal to you, but literary fiction doesn't include those subjects in its niche. And, foremost, you realize that life works in very dreamlike ways, and speaks to us in synchronistic, dreamlike symbols, and if we wake up to it, we can learn a lot from it, and direct it more to our liking.

My goal is to write and encourage others to write and publish and read more fiction, and other forms of writing, that helps us move past the very need for more drama, more fiction, more stories that just continue the formulaic plot. The suspense, the sweaty palms, the adrenalin rush, the climax that is always full of conflict and dualism.

I'd like to see more fiction that helps us peek out of the story and look around at the dream from a more lucid standpoint. Is it our egos that make us addicted to the traditional stories, the horror, the detective, the lovers in danger of being forever parted, because it gets adrenalin flowing as we identify with the characters? Our egos thrive on problems to solve, on ups and downs, on stimulants, and then, when the adrenals crash, more stimulants once again. Can we remain more stable, not so dominated by our sympathetic nervous system fight for flight responses, but more in balance with our para sympathetic nervous system's calmer homeostasis? Can we move beyond the addictions to the stories of our egos, and be more aware of the lucid parts of ourselves beyond those stories?

Yes, fiction can certainly entertain, and give us a good story, but can it propel us out of our trap within the dream as well, be a dream that creates the opportunity for lucidity within it? Can it be like a dream that goes so awry that we realize it isn't real, and that we can take off flying? Can it remind us that we are participating in this common dream that we are only pretending to be limited human beings encased in these solid bodies, but that when we astral travel, or travel beyond even the astral plane, we can indeed fly because we are spirits, we are light, we are everything?