"Tell the truth, but tell it slant."
Sep. 27th, 2006 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompson—Emily Dickinson
I don't remember a time when I wasn't storytelling. Before I could write, I preyed upon my playmates for an audience. I actually had some of them convinced (for about an hour, anyway, until I admitted it was a story) that the repaired patch of floor in my bedroom closet which resembled a trapdoor led to an alternate universe: Candyland. I told them about how the trapdoor only opened in deepest night, but when you went through it was daylight on the other side and quite tropical, the branches of the trees laden with Juicy Fruit and Sweet Tarts, the vines literally cherry and licorice Vines, the paving stones of the path through the forest made of Chiclets. So it appears that I was doomed to be a genre writer from an early age—and I learned an important lesson that day in not disappointing an audience after weaving a good tale.
I suppose I got the storytelling gene from my biological father, who was a consummate yarn-spinner. He had that old-fashioned power, that around-the-campfire fascination essence, which drew people (especially kids) to pause in what they were doing and Listen. I'm not half the storyteller he was, but I clearly inherited or learned some of my fundamentals there.
Dad had a penchant for adventure stories in which he was the star—so many stories of an event-filled life. I know that at least a couple of them were not real-life because after he died I found out that they couldn't have happened the way he related them. The first time I found that out it totally rocked my world. These were stories I'd come to believe in as much as I believed in the power of a red rose to smell sweet. Undermining these stories meant I had nothing to hold on to, would never be able to know what of my dad's life was truth and what was something he made up.
After a time, I came to understand that if my father's stories didn't literally happen the way he told them, they were nonetheless true for him, as true as he could make them. He was writing fiction of the heart, without writing it down.
I make a much clearer distinction between fiction and real life, and I write my fiction down. But I also try to write fiction of the heart, as true as I can make it to the internal realities of my characters, and life as I have experienced it in my own fractured way. It's a distant echo of my father's power of storytelling, but like his stories, as real as I can make something that never happened.
Random quote of the day:
"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances."
—Martha Washington
I don't remember a time when I wasn't storytelling. Before I could write, I preyed upon my playmates for an audience. I actually had some of them convinced (for about an hour, anyway, until I admitted it was a story) that the repaired patch of floor in my bedroom closet which resembled a trapdoor led to an alternate universe: Candyland. I told them about how the trapdoor only opened in deepest night, but when you went through it was daylight on the other side and quite tropical, the branches of the trees laden with Juicy Fruit and Sweet Tarts, the vines literally cherry and licorice Vines, the paving stones of the path through the forest made of Chiclets. So it appears that I was doomed to be a genre writer from an early age—and I learned an important lesson that day in not disappointing an audience after weaving a good tale.
I suppose I got the storytelling gene from my biological father, who was a consummate yarn-spinner. He had that old-fashioned power, that around-the-campfire fascination essence, which drew people (especially kids) to pause in what they were doing and Listen. I'm not half the storyteller he was, but I clearly inherited or learned some of my fundamentals there.
Dad had a penchant for adventure stories in which he was the star—so many stories of an event-filled life. I know that at least a couple of them were not real-life because after he died I found out that they couldn't have happened the way he related them. The first time I found that out it totally rocked my world. These were stories I'd come to believe in as much as I believed in the power of a red rose to smell sweet. Undermining these stories meant I had nothing to hold on to, would never be able to know what of my dad's life was truth and what was something he made up.
After a time, I came to understand that if my father's stories didn't literally happen the way he told them, they were nonetheless true for him, as true as he could make them. He was writing fiction of the heart, without writing it down.
I make a much clearer distinction between fiction and real life, and I write my fiction down. But I also try to write fiction of the heart, as true as I can make it to the internal realities of my characters, and life as I have experienced it in my own fractured way. It's a distant echo of my father's power of storytelling, but like his stories, as real as I can make something that never happened.
Random quote of the day:
"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances."
—Martha Washington
no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 11:56 pm (UTC)Yes, that movie was very meaningful for me, made me sniffle bunches. :-) I wrote a story about one of my dad's "untrue" stories and when I saw Big Fish I thought, "So much for publishing that story."
no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 12:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 10:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 11:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 11:58 pm (UTC)