The trouble starts when we try to do things in the real world.
We therefore resolve to stay within the safe folds of fictional realities.
Is there a real world?
The real world is a wondrous magical realm where real people interact and their separate minds push back on one another and together compromise their ways into shared realities.
We wish we could be a part of it.
It seems so wonderfully unlonely.
But it is also a dangerous place, where you can harm real people and their shared systems and understandings.
One must tread lightly there!
And one must accept that one cannot daydream it into the shape that one daydreams one desires.
We accept that, but somehow we forget and forget again and everything goes wrong.
So we apologize, bend low in a formal bow, and then run like mad off until we’re behind the curtains and safely off stage.
OK, made it.
Now we’ll just pretend, since we never learned how and when to stop pretending and listen and react to another’s voice.
We want to!
But since we fail to, everyone’s better off if we work exclusively in fiction.

Signed,
Bartleby Willard, WHA (World-Historic Author)
Amble Whistletown, ME (Matchless Editor)