Dear Me,

Hello. Hello. You need to stop reading so many damn Warhammer 40k books. Why? I enjoy them. They aren’t literature, they are trash science fiction. Awfully pretentious of you Mr. English Major. Look, if you ever want to become a decent writer you are going to have to stop reading there trite meaningless crap and delve into something with some meat, it’s how you learn. Really, how is that? Real books teach you things, what works, the power of symbols, metaphors, and truly effective narrative structure. So you are saying these don’t exist in the books I’m reading now? That is exactly what I am saying. That’s bullshit, and I’ll tell you why; when you read a book why are you reading it? To learn, to figure out what works and how- No, not just us, everyone, why does everyone who reads read? I don’t know. You damn well know, you just don’t want to say it. Say what? To be entertained. They read because they want to be entertained. If you are writing something and you are not entertained, no matter how good the symbols, metaphors or whatever other shit you care so much about, it is nothing. It is a drained lifeless corpse, a car with no gas, a hollow manifesto, take your pick. That is part of it but purely basic entertainment doesn’t teach you anything. Sure it does. Ok, now I know you lying, there is nothing to be learned from repetitive war scenes all with the same redundant description of a headshot blowing out the pack of their helmet in a gray mist; it’s been done and it’s boring. See that is something I learned. War, the shit they are showing us, it has been done, some of it works some of it doesn’t. And there is stuff besides war, there is the parts between, where the characters talk and the author can try and built his characters. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes they are hollow, disinteresting people who I don’t care about, but sometimes…Remember Warsmith Dantioch? Yeah…he was awesome. He was more than awesome, he was a carefully defined character that even though he was an eight foot tall super warrior in power armor you still felt for him, he was real! You pulled for him, hoped beyond hope they he would succeed. And that ending… Exactly! Only through reading it can I figure out what works and what doesn’t, ‘fine’ literature is a pretentious surname whose only exceptionality comes with the literature it chooses to take it. It isn’t a genre, it is someone sitting in a room of books, an infinite world of ideas, and says “only these are good”. It is self-limiting and a hindrance to growth on any level. Sure there are books that don’t have a literary leg to stand on- Twilight. Precisely, but you can’t take such a broad stroke to things, and you sure as shit can’t do it to things you know you enjoy reading. It’s just…stupid. Alright fine, maybe it has its place, but can you at least try reading a little more general fiction, like maybe every couple of books just throw in a piece Hemingway or Faulkner? I hate Faulkner. Oh for Christ’s-

Sincerely,

You