On Writing...

Ex. 23: 7 Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.
***

A writer’s life is a world in which reality and fantasy collide. Imagine if you will, your real world has everything you could possibly have imagined; a luscious home, a fancy car, friends ‘to die for’ and a perfect little family; everything moving along at a pace of normalcy.

Now imagine if you will the writer’s life/reality. Your home is lost, your car runs in a ditch, family is so far away the only contact is from a facebook message or email, and friends? Friends can be counted on one hand, minus the fingers.

Writer’s need to add to their writing many twists and turns; hills and mountains, sunny days amid the stormy gray days. That is what builds a story and wouldn’t ya know, it is diversity that strengthens your reality.

If I asked you to define me, normal would not be your first choice of words. When I’m writing, I don’t want my words to say ‘normal’ either. I want their to be as much conflict and bumps in the story, well planned I might add and well written, but not normal. Normal is almost an ugly word these days.

I want my writing to emulate my life, but I don’t want the facts to be so close to reality, that family members are screaming at you to take their character out of that story. Or to stop it right there.

We writer’s need to know where the line of fiction is. If we want to tell a bit of our brothers story, make the character a distant friend and toss in some grand fabrication and hopefully our brothers won’t see themselves in the character!

Now if it is non-fiction, then you better well be on another continent, so when your family reads it, there are no lines of communication open so they can lambaste you for all your ‘lies’ that you told about them.

It’s ironic, I’m putting together my memoirs, and even I think it is far fetched and I lived the darn life! Life is stranger than fiction is a quote I often think of as I continue the memoir. I have to keep in mind what reality has done to me, how it affected me, and the atrocities that entered my life, shaping me to who I am today.

I’d much rather shape a world of fiction, write out the highs and lows of a character, have her/him face challenges and hopefully in the end, triumph. Now that’s another question to ponder, should you always have a happy ending? I don’t know if a happy ending is what sells a story, but a complete story with a believable ending, one that fell into your lap and just had to do to make the story whole.

Not all endings are happy...just as in reality...not all decisions result in a happy ending. Writing is never cut and dry. It is write and write some more...

Job 21:34 How then comfort ye me in vain, seeing in your answers there remaineth falsehood?