When I was growing
up, writing fiction was easy. It was almost all I wrote. I hadn’t yet learned
that “you have such an imagination” can be (and often is) used as an insult. I
hadn’t yet grown up in a science- and technology-driven world where creating
something new only counts if it makes money. I couldn’t write creative
nonfiction yet because I hadn’t really lived enough to have much to write
about. And even if I’d been able to think of something, I hadn’t yet lived
enough to possess the long-term perspective necessary to knit life experiences
into a cohesive, meaningful whole.
So in the past few
years I’ve mainly written creative nonfiction, and from what I hear my fellow
writing friends say, I suspect I’m not alone.
Odd that I catch
myself feeling like it’s somehow wrong—like lying—to make up a pretend
character. When I thought about this, I finally realized it feels like
something even worse than this. It feels like—horrors!—playing. Loafing.
Goofing off. Because writing fiction is
fun.
When I was a
little kid, I wasn’t always thrilled with the playground. Any type of free play
was welcome, but team sports often meant I couldn’t play what I wanted. Some
sports felt like one more way to be bound by somebody else’s expectations, and
in this case the expectations came from a whole team at once. Those rubber
playground balls became an ironic metaphor for something I was told was good,
but which proved to be both painfully hard and elusive.
But I will never
forget the feeling I had when the teacher announced we were going to write a
story or poem. Any of those messages was like throwing open the doors to the
REAL playground. I was free in the truest sense—free to romp within the world
of my own making where I felt at home.
It was admittedly
a weird world. While some parts of my life were absolutely ideal, others left
me feeling helplessly trapped. Within the realm of creativity, I was able to
move where and how I wanted to go without anyone else defining me according to
whatever it was they wanted of me at the time. It was like a pleasant dream. In
the world of fiction, I could make everything the way I wanted it.
Odd, then, that when
I sit down to write fiction these days, it feels awkward at first. I find I
must give myself permission to “play.” The hardest work comes in freeing
myself—not just from all of the pressures and obligations and restrictions of
everyday life that always lie in wait when I’m trying to set aside time to
write—but also from the pressures and obligations and restrictions I’ve placed
on myself through the years. One of the things that binds my writing hands is the
worry that the characters I create won’t be authentic because they aren’t real.
What I find is that once I get going, my characters don’t feel inauthentic at
all. They are more so, in fact, now that I’m old enough to understand depth and
nuance. I’m old enough to have learned, over and over, how complex everyone is,
and it’s that very complexity that gives characters their depth and breathes
life into them.
As the bindings
loosen, I’m encouraged in the endeavor not in spite of my age, but because of
it: I’ve lived long enough to know that truth often can be stranger than fiction, so who says any departure from truth
can’t be believable? And why not explore a little strangeness? The nice thing
about creating a world is that in fiction, people are willing to suspend
belief.
We even accept
obvious gaps in logic if the story is good enough. So what if Harry Potter had
to go through a year as a Triwizard Tournament contestant just so he could
touch the bewitched winner’s cup rather than be transported much earlier in the
semester by a more ordinary item? We didn’t mind suspending a little logic because
we showed up for the thrill of the ride and not the restrictions of
anal-retentive logic. In fact, most readers love the idea of being suspended in
fun, because reading fiction itself is the act of playing. As writers, by
freeing ourselves to have fun and take a wild ride, we free the audience we’ve
invited to bring with us.
Once I throw open
that rusty door after all these years and cast off the heavy accumulation of
chores and worries and roles and expectations clogging my gears—the world out
there (or maybe I should say “in” there) feels like that beloved playground all
over again. All I have to do is buy myself the proverbial ticket to go there
and have fun.
The creation of something new is not
accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner
necessity. The creative mind plays with
the objects it loves. ~C. G. Jung
