Giving into a Fiction Willingly

A writer friend introduced me to this quote by Wallace Stevens:  The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.

Yes! Writing is the enactment of belief, pursuing something which may be real or which may be fiction, but even if we believe it's fiction (that is our stories are pointless or won’t have impact or are just plain stupid), we can't help ourselves. Case in point: Noah, who to me was the first screenwriter :)  - who believed it would rain, that the end of the world was coming, but at the same time must have known that was an impossibility, but still/ultimately he drove himself (and his poor family) to build that ark. So giving into a fiction willingly. Believing the impossible. Yes!  This is what it is to be a writer.

(pic by James Edwin Mcconnell)