Adaptation of a Stephen King quote: All fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.
I've found in past writing experiments (and we're talking strictly fiction, here, people - the stuff I really love) that the truth always shines through.
By truth I mean this: the things I believe, the principles I base my life on, the hardest core bits of me that will never break up no matter the intensity or pressure from the outside. I think we can argue that fiction is fabricated so it can be completely separated from the person who made it up (and we do argue this to protect ourselves - from pre-judgements, from pigeon-holing, from criticism).
But at the same time, I think it can be argued that creators - no matter what medium they use - must infuse the work with some of themselves. A sculptor cannot create a piece of art without touching the stone, running his hands over the planes and textures, dripping sweat onto its surface, scraping his knuckles against it. In the same way, a writer cannot write a piece of fiction without leaving traces of herself in the work.
I would have it no other way! While it makes the writing process infinitely more painful - picking at threads of your soul and weaving them into a story other than your own leaves you frayed, to say the least - the end result carries that ring of truth that we all search for in books. It becomes a human work that speaks the same language as its readers.
All of this is going somewhere, I promise.
I've been encouraged to join NaNoWriMo this year, and I have. I'm terrified. I don't think I've ever written for a month straight. I am full of stories, though, and the terror is tempered by a building excitement.
So if you're interested (thousands of people all over the world writing 50,000 words in one month? curious...!), you're welcome to follow me: here at the WriteMe blog and on Twitter @ScribbleMeJ. Beginning November 1st, this blog will be a scratch pad for the NaNo process. I'll try to get the fancy word count widgets and such, but I make no promises (I suck at computers).
Have you ever read the poem, "Mythopoeia" by Tolkien. This post makes me think of one of my favorite lines from it:
ReplyDeleteThe heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Josh, I've heard of it, but not read it! Thanks for sharing... I'm going to dig up the rest. That's fantastic!
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