Monday, May 23, 2011
Liar Liar Pants on Fire...
I've discovered my problem with finishing stories I start writing. Well really I have two problems. Firstly, I realized, or remembered really, that I'm terrible at telling stories when they're true, unless they involve me injuring myself in some way or getting called a slut (which is more than a little injuring). I do all my best storytelling when I'm telling outright lies, or when I'm reiterating stories about particularly epic lies I've told. Most of these stories and lies come from my childhood. So this brings me to my next problem which is that I can't figure out how to end most of my stories (the written ones that is), which I think is because they're too personal and mostly actually about real events and since my life hasn't ended, I can't imagine endings to my stories. Therefore, I think I ought to stick to writing things that are fictional, or at least mostly fictional and things will work out a bit better. That strategy seems to be working better for me so far.
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Hi Jane,
ReplyDeleteI was surfing the blogosphere and ran across your blog. I like the straightforward design. Many of the blogs are way too busy and distracting. Anyway, this post really resonated with me because I have grappled with the same problem of drawing upon reality in writing fiction. A writing teacher once told me that we should draw on our experiences, but not worry about honoring them. In other words, let go and let the kernel of the story take on a life of its own. As far as telling lies in fiction, I like Sir Philip Sidney's idea in his "The Defense of Poesy" in response to the 16th century puritanical attack on poets and play-writes, which accused them of being immoral liars. He said, "Now, for the poet, he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth. For, as I take it, to lie is to affirm that to be true which is false. So as the other artists, and especially the historian, affirming many things, can, in the cloudy knowledge of mankind, hardly escape from many lies. But the poet never maketh any circles about your imagination, to conjure you to believe for true what he writes." According to Sidney, the poets, play-writes, and fiction writers, are the real truth tellers, because they are not confined by the parameters of so-called "truth." Anyway, keep writing!
Dave