How To Write The Truth

She told me once (or maybe it was the room in general and I just happened to be listening particularly attentively) that it's easier to write if you're a little "messed up," so to speak.  It's easier to put in twisted plots and convoluted emotions if you've been through them or understood them or at least had the imagination to think them up, because even that takes a bit of non-standard thinking on the part of the author.  That's why she said it's easier for her to write, because she's questioned her sanity and accepted the quirks as part of her personality, as tools in her writing.  They help her come up with stories and put them into words.

I have to wonder what people think of my writing.  More importantly, I wonder what they think of me, or how my writing reflects on me as an individual.  I think at one point someone asked me how I can write the way I do.  I don't remember how I answered (or even if this was a legitimate question or merely a figment of my imagination), but I think I've figured something out.  You write the truth.  You write the things you know, the things you've lived through, the things you've spent nights dreaming about. 

When you spill your soul into writing, you soak it through with truth.  Because it actually happened, because you really felt that way, it has to be real.  There's no way it's not because, well, you've been there, you've done it, you've lived the experience, the thought, the emotion.  And sometimes people will question it anyway.  They'll tell you that your characters are unrealistic, that people would not respond to a given event like this because it's just not how people are.  Then you have days when you want more than anything else to correct them, to tell them, to throw it in their faces and scream at them. 

"This is the truth.  This is how it works.  I'm not guessing or creating, I'm writing what I know because people don't always react the way they're supposed to and things aren't always going to have a clean beginning middle and end.  Sometimes everything just goes to hell and more often than not you have no choice but to walk away from it unresolved, so don't tell me that I need to put in a better ending.  There is no better ending, because this is life.  This is how it sometimes goes."

But you can't.  You can't tell them that.  Because they'll stare at you, or not believe you, or send you to see a psychologist.  Because of course, if it doesn't just work, if it's messed up, if it's foolish and you're aware of it but live that way anyway, there has to be something wrong with you.  It must be that you need help.  So you don't say anything.  You sit in silence and fume as they tear your work to shreds and suggest alterations, wondering why their criticism hurts so much.

And then it hits you.  Because that's not just a story, that's your story.  It's not just a piece of writing, it's the goddamn truth.  And it's one thing to change a story to make it sound pretty, but you can't really change pieces of a life that's already happened so that it looks better on paper.  That's why I like the stories without clean endings.  Why I fall in love with characters who are so flawed and just slightly beyond the realm of the believable.

People aren't always believable.  Life doesn't always make sense.  Truth, in the end, really is stranger than fiction.  That's why so often when you write about things that actually happened, things that matter to you, emotions you've actually felt, sometimes it's not going to feel right.  And oftentimes it's not going to be liked.  What it comes down to is that it's easiest to write about things we know.  While many people know a base level of common, every-day, ordinary, everyone has their own skewed perceptions of things. 

What I see, you won't always understand.  What you see, I may not be capable of appreciating.  Sometimes you let the words take hold and you just  let it flow past your brain, not comprehending, until it ends up on the page.  Most people aren't going to appreciate the truth because it doesn't usually make for a good story.  I like stories in their own right, but I have to say, I've always been a bigger fan of the truth, if only because it has a tendency to do some truly unbelievable things.