Love Me, Love My Fiction
Because I’m going to keep writing it regardless
I’ve been a liar my whole life. I began making up stories before I could read.
That’s what stories are, you know. Lies. Stuff we make up. Stuff we create as if we’re little gods. We create universes. We create lives and intertwine them and ping them into the stratosphere only to shoot them down and mourn them. It’s part of our hard-wiring and, even with every bit of conditioning and pressure and undermining that starts from the moment we move our first crayon outside the line, we remain storytellers. Listen to any guy embellishing the events of last night’s game or any kid with his skateboard describing in gory detail that latest wipeout. See? If you’re a human being you’re telling stories.
However, not all of us write our stories down. In fact, not many of us do percentage-wise. There’s a reason for that and part of it is that undermining that starts when we’re very young. But it’s also because it’s hard to do.
Sure, that first sentence or paragraph may float up from some providential sub-consciousness but then what are you supposed to do with it? With every word, you’re creating a logical structure that you have to adhere to and if you make any changes, be prepared for the whole thing to collapse. Not only do you have to maintain this fragile…
