Relearning the Art of Pretend

           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