Fun With Fiction

Writing fiction is like painting with words. I believe Voltare said that and I wholeheartedly agree. That is why I dislike social media- because it is a vast medium upon which you can paint word pictures that aren't necessarily truthful. For example, I could search the internet and probably find a picture of a vehicle like mine that has been in an accident, steal the picture and then post it on my social media page with something like "I had a bad accident today but I'm okay..." and continue on to fill in some details and post it.  It's fiction but who would know?

My previous post- was it real or fiction? How would you know? 

Writers have an amazing ability to draw you into a world that does not exist. They populate it with people you feel as if you know but those people do not really exist, yet you love them, you hate them you wish they were your friend, your co-worker, your neighbor, a classmate or even a family member. I have read so many books where I wish I could step into the story and grab the character and give them a good shake, or take them for coffee and have a heart to heart talk with them about their wrong choices...I have created characters who have broken my heart and characters who live in my heart that I can't let go of.

I try to have fun when I write but there have been times when I've written angry, written sad, written goofy, written playful...and written just outright funny. I have a streak of sarcasm and cynicism in me a mile wide and at the bottom of that chasm flows a river named Irony. The little town of Humor perches on the precipice and laughter flows down hill from all the little houses there.

Be careful what you read because it can draw you in like a mesmerist and make you dance like a monkey.

Here's something interesting and fun that I do to amuse myself when writing. I weave one thing from my real life into each story or novel that I create. It's a game I play with my daughter who reads everything that I write. My challenge is for her to find that ne thing- a favorite food, a piece of clothing, a place we've visited, a room in our house, a book we've both read, a cat we owned at one time, a friend I've fictionalized as a character in a story, a car one of us has driven or wants to own...it's a literary scavenger hunt- and yes, she usually finds it because she's very analytical and she's played the game since she was a child and I wrote stories for her back then.

Even when I'm writing something absolutely ponderous I still have to have a little fun with the words- playing with alliteration or something similar.

I have always been a creative person. Growing up I slept with a notebook and a pencil beside my pillow. I learned how to write in the dark because I didn't always have a flashlight and I didn't want to be turning the light on and off all throughout the night disturbing my sister and brother- we didn't close our doors because we had cats who liked to come and go throughout the night. I got to be pretty good at writing in the dark- fairly straight lines of prose. I still will get up at night if something comes to me and I'll wander up to the kitchen and write whatever it is on a 5X8 lined pad on the counter, tear off the sheet and leave it for myself on the kitchen table. Old habits never die, not in this house.

My sister, who is also a writer, gets mad at me and tells me I don't talk writing seriously. I do. I am very hard on myself choosing the right word that I want, the perfect word that reflects exactly how I want the character to think or feel or express themselves, or how I want a scene painted, a background to appear. I love words and I love language. I write fast and furious but then I tinker and amend until the story is absolutely perfect in my opinion with all the words exactly how I want them to be, saying what I want them to say and leaving unsaid those things the reader needs to think about long after the book has been read so they want to go back and reread the book again and fill in the blanks with insight. I work hard at what I do...and I have fun.

Writing should be a labor of love not an agony of hard labor.

Just remember- everybody writes fiction. Fiction can be as simple as embellishment of the truth.