Fast Fiction

I was posting in the NaNoWriMo forums today. Again.

I’m kind of torn about how to handle these public forums. I don’t know if people are serious when they talk about how scared they are about writing a novel, about how little support they’re getting, about how little they know about writing. Sometimes I think that it’s a kind of posturing, a way of soliciting supportive responses, even if you don’t really want or need them. But I’m a trusting soul; I answer as if they’re honestly looking for support. But then I think I’m coming off as some sort of pompous twit or something.

If I knew it all, I’d be a guru or something. And I’d practice what I preach.

But I do know this. You cannot write something that isn’t in you. But that doesn’t mean that you have to write about yourself. There is a huge difference between what you know and what you can find out. What’s inside of you is your experience, not just what you’ve done. I’ve seen too many novice writers limit themselves by writing about themselves ... plain and unadulterated. Yes, the story of a kid trying to come to grips with being different is interesting and universal. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t set that story in 14th century China with a young warrior trying to come to grips with his homosexuality in an Imperial Palace. Or set it with a leper at the time of Christ or a woman faced with losing her job after World War II when the men returned home.

I write to understand. The stories that pop into my head are more questions than anything else. I get characters that pop in there and then circumstances and then occasions and then conflicts. They perform for me, they have their lives and I watch and write it all down. If I don’t understand hate or intolerance, something in the back of my mind will construct a framework to help me understand in some small way.

Most of the things that have been popping into my head for the past year or so have been about faith. We can all guess what that’s all about. And some of them address it head on, but I think the more interesting approach is to go at it from another angle. Because that’s where the surprises come in.

I am looking forward to this coming month where these things will open up to me. I worry that I haven’t picked the right story to tell. But these characters and scenes have been following me around for some twelve years now. I’ve got to get them out soon. And who knows what it is that they have to teach me. Oh, I long for those moments where things suddenly click and I’m taken away from whatever keyboard I’m at and into that world.