Truth in Tales

Pss. 30:9 What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth?

Have you ever read Hansel and Gretal? Well, I’m sure at some point you have, if not yourself maybe for your child? Did you ever wonder if the world they lived in was real?

Writers have a tendency to write fiction that comes off as an intricate world of fairytale imagery. I often wonder where the truth is and sometimes I won’t even read it because of the frivolous lie that I’m trying to be forced into.

Take for example sci-fi. I am no fan of sci-fi for the very reason that the conjured worlds I can not really climb into and envision myself. When I read a book I like to envision myself running through the field/street scene and with sci-fi, I can never seemingly grasp running on Mars.

Another example is vampire stories. Now I know there are millions of fans who love a good vampire story. They love the fantasy world, climb into it, and relish all the dark substances that it entails. I don’t like them and I know there are actually people who drink blood and think these vampire tales to be some sort of truth to them. I bet there is even some sort of statistical facts that can prove their existence. I’m not interested. Don’t inundate me with false truths.

Years ago the possibility of life on Mars was an impossibility and recent scientific studies show that life on Mars will become a probability. Maybe some of your sci-fi tales will become a reality. But no, I don’t believe vampires are real, so don’t try to sell me that tale.

I know some people like the occult and I myself, when I was a young child, dove into those tales thinking them to be truth. I quickly had to ride out of those childhood fantasies and hold onto something that was truth just to keep my sanity.

I remember watching The Lost Boys and I so wanted vampires to be real. It was a stimulating arousal wanting Keifer to suck on my neck and make me one with him. My disillusion quickly faded when I found God. Now I know some of you Christians out there can read those non truths and walk with God at the same time, but me, I don’t feel complete. So I don’t read fantasies like The DaVinci Code or Salem’s Lot.

Some will tell me that the DaVinci Code was based on scientific studies and proof, but to me, it is a book full of lies wanting to distract me from the truth. That’s what fantasy is to me, a demonizing of truth. I prefer non-fiction, or at least a fiction based on a true story, than read about, fill my mind with, hunger, for lies!

As you can imagine I was pretty upset as a young child being told that Santa was not real, or the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny for that matter. I felt that it was a betrayal and no, maybe I never did get over it because now, I don’t like lies or fantasy tales.

As a writer we’re supposed to be open to fiction. It’s what we do, write lies in hopes someone walks away loving it.

My truths are not your truths, nor yours mine, and I’m okay with that, but please don’t try to sell me on your truths when mine are already formed. It’s demeaning to me as a human being. 

I read what I like to read, you read what you like to read. As humans we’re allowed that, to be different. I don’t force my beliefs on you, please refrain from trying to force your beliefs on me.

You read me because I obviously have written something that you WANTED to read. You stay away because I obviously DON’T have something you want to read. Granted this post makes absolutely no sense, but that’s okay, in the coming days you might put it all together and it will make sense.

My point being this week will be, truth and all that means to us as writers who are trying to sell the story to the public. Readers want something to hold onto as truth; to carry with them throughout the day or their life. We as writer’s are obligated to give them that.

Memory Lane Part II

Pss. 90:4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
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That post was longer than anticipated yesterday and I thought it warranted a continuation.

As writers, what we are doing in our stories, whether our fictional work or our non-fictional work, we are bringing our past into a character, a scene, an emotion, or maybe a dream.

When I read novel, as a writer, I know in some part there are pieces of the author strewn all about the pages like confetti on New Years. Take To Kill a Mockingbird for example, you can not write something like that without knowing the intricate depths of a situation.

Even authors  like Stephen King has laid pieces of himself in the pages of his stories. He has said about while writing The Shining, he felt like a mad man, drinking boozing it up, life getting out of control, and the Jack Torrance that we (most of us) have all come to know, was born. In his later works after King sobered up, his story Duma Key took on a new color as a new phase took over Mr. Kings life.

I find in my writings, I like to dip into the spiritual pool. My early childhood was shaped by spirits, whether good spirits or the dark nasty ones that you really don’t want to talk about. You’d rather lock them in a closet in the back of the basement somewhere and pretend that they don’t exist.

As a writer, all the doors of your past are open wide, even the little nasty stuff that you buried comes spilling out onto the page. Things you hadn’t remembered for years comes to the surface, you grab your net and scoop up the memory like a fisherman on a good day. You’ve dipped, you now have caught, you own it and you place it on the page.

My childhood was shaped by experience also. Images of the men, the smoke-filled bars, pool balls clanking, men cheering or arguing, the tapping of glasses, the smell, the awful stale aroma of beer that lay in the taps basin. The music, the jukebox that was probably my savior at nine years old.

Ask my brothers if they were sitting in bars at nine years old. Ask them if men felt them up in places that drunken old men thought was playful but to a child felt dirty. Ask the boys, ask one of them, or my sister for that matter, did they sneak drinks of vodka and orange when they were mere babies? Eight or nine year old's belong home not in a bar sipping drinks, sneaking from the glass that was okay for mother to drink from. But then again, home wasn’t much different from the bars.

Yeah that was me, spoiled rotten and given everything. A drinking, toking, smoking child is what shaped my past. Do I long for what was? Never! I bury it in my stories. I was saved by the grace of the Lord. When I write, I write from heartfelt true-blue experience. My inspiration comes from the only thing that has ever grabbed onto me and stuck and that is God!

And that is a piece of MY story.