One time when I was four, I stuck a button up my nose. I was watching Saturday morning cartoons with my brother while my parents slept in and that button fit my nostril just perfectly. I was showing my brother how I could use it to make a nostril cap and the next thing I knew it was too far in for me to dig out.
One time when I was four, I chewed an entire pack of Grape Bubble Yum, stretched it out into a rope, and then wound it around and around my leg. When I tried to get it off, it stuck everywhere. I finally had to go get my mom and show her my purple leg. It didn't come off. I wasn't allowed to chew gum for a very long time after that.
One time when I was four, I was watching Romper Room. Snack time was over and they were getting ready to dance with Mr. Do-Bee and suddenly the action stopped because a little girl was crying. She didn't get a chance to finish her cookie. I cried too. It was horrible.
I was looking over a bit of fiction for an acquaintance the other day and feeling the lizard in my brain getting a little feisty. Her fiction was gorgeous in its simplicity - engaging characters, believable dialogue, a clear setting, a story that moved. I was impressed and I was jealous. Why can't I write fiction? I have tried so many times and it comes out stilted, cliched, boring, unreadable. Certainly nothing I would package up and send anywhere except the recycling bin. No fair! This is a discussion I have with myself a lot.
I read a remarkable short fiction piece on another blog. She had written the piece in the first person and it was personally evocative for several of her readers. She apologized for the immediacy and intimacy of the first person perspective because it seemed too real. I think some people didn't realize it was purely fictional.
I say it frequently enough, I don't write fiction. I don't write short stories, I don't write novels. I don't "have a novel in me" as some claim to do. I write... what? Nonsense, mostly. Stuff I've been thinking about, memories, observations, elaborations on a few moments in time. Technically, if it were bound in a book and gathering dust on the bargain rack of an independent bookstore someplace, it would be considered non-fiction if it would be considered at all. But here's the thing: isn't the very act of conjuring these thoughts, stretching them out, dressing them in pretty words, turning them this way and that to make a point, isn't that creating a form of fiction?
Consider: I write about very real moments with my very real children, but I select the moments carefully. I choose moments that speak to me, things I can write well about, things that make a larger point. I don't make up the characters or setting or dialogue, but the overall picture that's painted is not technically accurate. It's a small moment in a day full of other more mundane or more regrettable moments; but you, the reader, get a picture of a gentle mom with the right thing to say, not the fuller picture of a mom with plumber's butt and dirty hair who has mastered the art of the strategically placed "mmm-hmmm" when a small person tells a long story she's long since tuned out. Does this not create a kind of fiction?
Consider my memories above. Three separate instances of complete childishness from over thirty years ago. They are my memories, they really did happen. If you ask my mom, she may say they happened differently or she may not remember that they happened at all. Which is true? Isn't the act of remembering simply creating the story of our lives?
I was talking to a friend today about a folk dancing class I took in college. I got a D and blew my 4.0 because during the final I turned the wrong way and smacked the girl next to me across the bridge of her nose with a tambourine. My friend thought this was hilarious and was appropriately indignant that my GPA was ruined by a folk dancing class, but as she was laughing she said "That sounds like something out of a book!" This notion rankles. We look to fiction for stories, for fantastic happenings, for entertainment. And it does provide all those things, but what about the non-fiction? People's lives are full of entertaining stories, fantastic happenings that embellish with the telling.
These are the questions I've been mulling, so I'll put them out there and see what gives. I have no point today, just a lot of open-ended questions and a growing restlessness. I will own up to a certain gift for writing, but writing what?
One time when I was four, I dressed up as Barbara Walters and interviewed my brother who pretended to be a famous boxer. I had a blond wig, a speech impediment and everything. That's got to be worth something.
One time when I was four, I chewed an entire pack of Grape Bubble Yum, stretched it out into a rope, and then wound it around and around my leg. When I tried to get it off, it stuck everywhere. I finally had to go get my mom and show her my purple leg. It didn't come off. I wasn't allowed to chew gum for a very long time after that.
One time when I was four, I was watching Romper Room. Snack time was over and they were getting ready to dance with Mr. Do-Bee and suddenly the action stopped because a little girl was crying. She didn't get a chance to finish her cookie. I cried too. It was horrible.
***
I read a remarkable short fiction piece on another blog. She had written the piece in the first person and it was personally evocative for several of her readers. She apologized for the immediacy and intimacy of the first person perspective because it seemed too real. I think some people didn't realize it was purely fictional.
I say it frequently enough, I don't write fiction. I don't write short stories, I don't write novels. I don't "have a novel in me" as some claim to do. I write... what? Nonsense, mostly. Stuff I've been thinking about, memories, observations, elaborations on a few moments in time. Technically, if it were bound in a book and gathering dust on the bargain rack of an independent bookstore someplace, it would be considered non-fiction if it would be considered at all. But here's the thing: isn't the very act of conjuring these thoughts, stretching them out, dressing them in pretty words, turning them this way and that to make a point, isn't that creating a form of fiction?
Consider: I write about very real moments with my very real children, but I select the moments carefully. I choose moments that speak to me, things I can write well about, things that make a larger point. I don't make up the characters or setting or dialogue, but the overall picture that's painted is not technically accurate. It's a small moment in a day full of other more mundane or more regrettable moments; but you, the reader, get a picture of a gentle mom with the right thing to say, not the fuller picture of a mom with plumber's butt and dirty hair who has mastered the art of the strategically placed "mmm-hmmm" when a small person tells a long story she's long since tuned out. Does this not create a kind of fiction?
Consider my memories above. Three separate instances of complete childishness from over thirty years ago. They are my memories, they really did happen. If you ask my mom, she may say they happened differently or she may not remember that they happened at all. Which is true? Isn't the act of remembering simply creating the story of our lives?
I was talking to a friend today about a folk dancing class I took in college. I got a D and blew my 4.0 because during the final I turned the wrong way and smacked the girl next to me across the bridge of her nose with a tambourine. My friend thought this was hilarious and was appropriately indignant that my GPA was ruined by a folk dancing class, but as she was laughing she said "That sounds like something out of a book!" This notion rankles. We look to fiction for stories, for fantastic happenings, for entertainment. And it does provide all those things, but what about the non-fiction? People's lives are full of entertaining stories, fantastic happenings that embellish with the telling.
These are the questions I've been mulling, so I'll put them out there and see what gives. I have no point today, just a lot of open-ended questions and a growing restlessness. I will own up to a certain gift for writing, but writing what?
One time when I was four, I dressed up as Barbara Walters and interviewed my brother who pretended to be a famous boxer. I had a blond wig, a speech impediment and everything. That's got to be worth something.
