Fiction and Truth

Writers are inspired by real life, of course, including people they've known and the tragedies and triumphs they have witnessed. People sometimes accuse fiction writers of relying too heavily on reality, in the mistaken belief that they ought to be inventing everything out of thin air if they want to call their work fiction. But writers don't present "reality" without alteration. They turn things around and mix things up -- so that people who never met in real life are suddenly lovers, and events that took place years apart are suddenly on the same day. Ironically, in distoring and rearranging reality, they hope to achieve truth. Writing is the "reimagining" of reality.

Diary of a Madman

Ozzy Osbourne titled one of his albums "Diary of Madman," I think. But isn't every diary that of a madman, really? What else but madness would compel someone to record his innermost thoughts and fears, in the hopes that anyone else would care? Isn't writing fiction in essence an act of madness, the inexplicable and hopeless urge to make sense of life, to force the past into a kind of neat pattern that is aesthestically and artistically pleasing? To believe you can impose such order on chaos is a mild madness surely, but to think anyone would care is sheer insanity.

Home Movies

The other day, I was reading a book about writing fiction, and the author suggested that writers who don't face their fears aren't really accomplishing what they need to as writers. They aren't going all the way, so to speak.

At first, I couldn't think of what it is I fear. I fear so many and so few things at the same time.
Later that night, while attempting to organize some boxes at my house, I recognized one of my fears, packed away safely in that spare room: my fear of the past. For almost 8 years now, I have paid for a small storage room just across the block from my house. It has been filled with miscellaneous bits of camping equipment and boxes of tax records, photos, home movies, and other junk not worth the cost of storage. It occurred to me tonight, as I was going through some of this stuff, that instead of storage, I was really paying for the convenience of not having to look at or otherwise deal with these memories. Just looking at the labels of the video tapes (home movies) filled me with a sense of dread and self-loathing regrets.

As I sorted through these boxes, I came very close to throwing away most of the home movies without watching them, because I figured that would be both painful and unproductive. What is the good of home movies anyway, unless the whole family stays together and they can be enjoyed nostalgically? Inevitably, someone will end up appearing on screen who has either died or disappeared for good.

Something about one of the video compilations caught my eye, though, so I decided to plug it into the VCR and see what I would be throwing away. As I watched the forgotten home movies spin like colorful and distant memories on the TV screen, I realized what the fiction-writing expert meant about facing your fears. Rather than simply feeling depressed or miserable while watching these images, I felt deep stirrings within, coupled with a renewed desire to write. On the TV screen I watched strange pictures of rooms in houses I no longer own, filled with furniture and other belongings that have long since disappeared. There were amazingly beautiful mountain vistas in Alaska, and some stunning images of my sister Wendy at age 20 or so – that film alone is worth saving the video for.

The videos were much higher quality than I expected, but more importantly, the settings and people gave rise to many ideas for writing, unexplored settings and situations that I had been avoiding (and missing out on) by neglecting my past. I must admit I've been in a funk since watching these videos, but I think it's a "good" funk, a sign of being alive and attached to my own life.

PS. For those of you paying attention, my blog on myspace will now duplicate what is posted here.