Ever since I can remember I've been surrounded by stories. Books stashed in shelves were my favorite sight as a child, and still are. I lost myself in the woods outlined by the pages of a novel, always in search of beastly fairies and gentle dragons. I was always the hero of tender heart and the villain of cunning intellect. I was the sea, lulling you to sleep or dragging you down to death.
I always believed in those stories, and I don't think that belief has waned with age. My faith is still held by all of those worlds woven by strings of words. I saw myself in every character, in every situation, in every feeling. Not in a sense of 'I'm like this character', but in a sense of kinship, of understanding and being understood. I could live every single thing others had lived before me, and most importantly, I could feel myself validated. I was not stupid or strange for liking the things I liked, I was not different for loving in the way I loved. My favorite characters had more flaws than I could count with the fingers of my hands, and I still loved them nonetheless. If I loved those characters, I could love others as well. I could love myself, no matter how many imperfections I saw when I looked at my reflection. I was ok, I was good, I was a truthful statement of life itself.
Now all those ideas remain at the back of my mind, telling me that I'm still valid. But university has turned my life upside down, and now I don't have as much time to read as I did when I was a careless child. I'm still struggling to fit in time in my schedule to sit down with a book and properly read it, and I've come to the realization that l'm not such a speed-reader now as I was then. I think that has impaired my imagination a bit. Growing old is no fun.
However, I still find some kind of cozy joy whenever I read a story set in a fantastical world. It's like a warm light filling up my chest. That's why I decided to start writing my own stories.
There's a kind of universality in fiction that I don't find in non-fiction works. In the latter I always feel like the authors are trying to dress up reality into some fancy imagination that is quite dishonest with what they truly want to express. However, in fiction, you can simply make up an entire universe out of whole cloth. And since you're not restricted by reality itself, you don't censor your words for a fear of being judged for trying to make yourself sound better than you actually are. You can explore the world with the innocence of a toddler and the brutality of desperation. In a fictional world, the things that are narrated, could be happening to anybody. They could be happening to you, and that's magical.
With fiction I can pick up my fountain pen and my worn out notebooks and I can become the sea itself, I can build my own cathedrals with crystal walls breaking down the light that passes through them. But I don't think of the action of writing so much as an 'I can', but rather more of an 'I do' situation. I do become pirate ships and the raiders that sail in them. I am the dragon and the slayer, I love and I hate. I have thousands of lovers or none of them. I work in every profession known to mankind and in others we can't even imagine. I study in a castle overlooking sharp mountains. I go through sadness and lust and fear and joy and utter savagery in the span of a page. I'm gentle and rude and canny and naïve. I'm life itself, I'm death itself. I'm heaven and hell and day and night. I'm made up of stardust and shadows and dreams and nightmares. I'm alive.
Fiction allows us to narrate our own life and the life of others we'll never get to know. Through fiction we comprehend the world and get a grasp of what we are. It's a bit self-centered, if I think it coolly. But I also remember my dog-eared books, the notebooks I've filled with words that were crawling out of my over-thinking brain, and then I can only think of fiction as the only way to live in the truest form. And we do it constantly.
We narrate our lives. We turn them into stories we tell to others because we need to get that weight out of our constricted chests. I've lost count of how many times my parents have narrated their life to me, of all the anecdotes that turn themselves into fairy tales when they roll out of a rapid-fire tongue. I can almost see those stories as movies in my head, and I realize every time I think of them that they're the truest stories I'll ever hear. We all are narrators, we all use language as a means of living, of connecting with others, of finding peace of mind. We're shaky rowboats drifting in a stormy ocean between cutting cliffs, driven by a mermaid's song into believing that something brilliant lies under the madness of the sea. And sometimes we do find that finer thing, and we perpetuate it in our minds with words. And we perpetuate it in others' minds with the written word.
I always believed in those stories, and I don't think that belief has waned with age. My faith is still held by all of those worlds woven by strings of words. I saw myself in every character, in every situation, in every feeling. Not in a sense of 'I'm like this character', but in a sense of kinship, of understanding and being understood. I could live every single thing others had lived before me, and most importantly, I could feel myself validated. I was not stupid or strange for liking the things I liked, I was not different for loving in the way I loved. My favorite characters had more flaws than I could count with the fingers of my hands, and I still loved them nonetheless. If I loved those characters, I could love others as well. I could love myself, no matter how many imperfections I saw when I looked at my reflection. I was ok, I was good, I was a truthful statement of life itself.
Now all those ideas remain at the back of my mind, telling me that I'm still valid. But university has turned my life upside down, and now I don't have as much time to read as I did when I was a careless child. I'm still struggling to fit in time in my schedule to sit down with a book and properly read it, and I've come to the realization that l'm not such a speed-reader now as I was then. I think that has impaired my imagination a bit. Growing old is no fun.
However, I still find some kind of cozy joy whenever I read a story set in a fantastical world. It's like a warm light filling up my chest. That's why I decided to start writing my own stories.
There's a kind of universality in fiction that I don't find in non-fiction works. In the latter I always feel like the authors are trying to dress up reality into some fancy imagination that is quite dishonest with what they truly want to express. However, in fiction, you can simply make up an entire universe out of whole cloth. And since you're not restricted by reality itself, you don't censor your words for a fear of being judged for trying to make yourself sound better than you actually are. You can explore the world with the innocence of a toddler and the brutality of desperation. In a fictional world, the things that are narrated, could be happening to anybody. They could be happening to you, and that's magical.
With fiction I can pick up my fountain pen and my worn out notebooks and I can become the sea itself, I can build my own cathedrals with crystal walls breaking down the light that passes through them. But I don't think of the action of writing so much as an 'I can', but rather more of an 'I do' situation. I do become pirate ships and the raiders that sail in them. I am the dragon and the slayer, I love and I hate. I have thousands of lovers or none of them. I work in every profession known to mankind and in others we can't even imagine. I study in a castle overlooking sharp mountains. I go through sadness and lust and fear and joy and utter savagery in the span of a page. I'm gentle and rude and canny and naïve. I'm life itself, I'm death itself. I'm heaven and hell and day and night. I'm made up of stardust and shadows and dreams and nightmares. I'm alive.
Fiction allows us to narrate our own life and the life of others we'll never get to know. Through fiction we comprehend the world and get a grasp of what we are. It's a bit self-centered, if I think it coolly. But I also remember my dog-eared books, the notebooks I've filled with words that were crawling out of my over-thinking brain, and then I can only think of fiction as the only way to live in the truest form. And we do it constantly.
We narrate our lives. We turn them into stories we tell to others because we need to get that weight out of our constricted chests. I've lost count of how many times my parents have narrated their life to me, of all the anecdotes that turn themselves into fairy tales when they roll out of a rapid-fire tongue. I can almost see those stories as movies in my head, and I realize every time I think of them that they're the truest stories I'll ever hear. We all are narrators, we all use language as a means of living, of connecting with others, of finding peace of mind. We're shaky rowboats drifting in a stormy ocean between cutting cliffs, driven by a mermaid's song into believing that something brilliant lies under the madness of the sea. And sometimes we do find that finer thing, and we perpetuate it in our minds with words. And we perpetuate it in others' minds with the written word.
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