I keep trying to write stories, unsuccessfully. I've tried to write stories since I was a very young child, always unsuccessfully. I remember, with fond cringing, the first full short story I was able to finish. I was 17, I think. I called it "The White Raven", and it was about a farmer in Ireland who went insane after seeing a white raven. Because ravens can't be white, see, so this raven couldn't exist, see? But it DID. And it BLEW HIS MIND. Literally. This story came about after I had been reading a whoooooole lot of books about chaos theory, and complexity theory, and fractals, and... well, lots of mind bendy science stuff. So I wanted to write about mind bendy science stuff, but in a fictiony kind of way.
It didn't work.
Oh, it so didn't work. I still have the story somewhere, and it's stilted and awkward and really pretty boring.
Any time I try to write fiction that's more than two paragraphs long, it's the same thing. I have a way with words, with stories. But only true ones. Or almost true ones. I can add a bit here and there, maybe cut off an extraneous leg or two. But I simply can't do pure fiction. I can start it, but if I ever force myself to finish it, it's terrible. That's not humility speaking, either. That's just plain fact.
I've decided that my inability to write fiction, combined with my absolute love of stories, means I'm supposed to live the stories, not write them. Not yet. I'll write them when I'm old, and they'll be true. I want to live a life worthy of a raucous, unbelievable, tangy autobiography. And when I'm 70 and living in South America on a houseboat with my lovers, I'll sit down and write what I can remember and make up what I can't. And I'll finally be able to finish a goddamn story.
It didn't work.
Oh, it so didn't work. I still have the story somewhere, and it's stilted and awkward and really pretty boring.
Any time I try to write fiction that's more than two paragraphs long, it's the same thing. I have a way with words, with stories. But only true ones. Or almost true ones. I can add a bit here and there, maybe cut off an extraneous leg or two. But I simply can't do pure fiction. I can start it, but if I ever force myself to finish it, it's terrible. That's not humility speaking, either. That's just plain fact.
I've decided that my inability to write fiction, combined with my absolute love of stories, means I'm supposed to live the stories, not write them. Not yet. I'll write them when I'm old, and they'll be true. I want to live a life worthy of a raucous, unbelievable, tangy autobiography. And when I'm 70 and living in South America on a houseboat with my lovers, I'll sit down and write what I can remember and make up what I can't. And I'll finally be able to finish a goddamn story.
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