Friday, January 7, 2011

Writing the Magic

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember but I have not always considered myself a writer. Growing up, I always used the words as survival tools but never thought past the process. First, it was all just merely therapeutic scribbling heartbreaks that decorated the pages of my pre-teen, pretty, pink diary. Then, during high school, it occurred to me that I could use that raw emotion to create my very own fiction. So I began writing silly stories in which my friends and I had everything we could ever dream of and it was quite gratifying. That’s the thing about writing, it sort creeps in there until you can’t breathe without writing the magic down.
Sure, it’s not all magic. We see things we never want to remember and we have experiences that we would rather die than share with anyone else…but that is the real beauty in aspiring to create something people can relate to. Life doesn’t always have the words or give us the endings we desire so we seek to create them in characters, settings, and by twisting plots until they make sense, make meaning. Even in the most convoluted of stories, writers stand before their readers naked and exposed every time they explore the “what ifs” and “why nots” of life.
Some fiction is actually so personal that it becomes the truth in one way or another. After all, the reader swims in the sea of reality that the writer provides and we all form our own opinions as a result of how the bikini fits.