This one is more self-titled than others. It’s a question to myself and anyone reading. Books are stories and we all have stories. If we all have stories, we all have books.
What would yours be? Say someone transcribed all the stories that sit quiet in your brain’s basement… how would it read? Be nice. We’re not grading memory here. We’re not grading at all. School is behind us— well, behind me.
I’m not asking for an autobiography. That would no doubt lead to a slew of unfair comparisons. Autobiographies are written by people who already know their stories are worth telling. Their imagination is not a tool they need use. This I say out of jealousy, not judgement.
And if I were to have a life worthy of an autiobiography, I still do not think I would want to write it down. No matter what my story contained, its ending would be contained to reality – and what a narrow set of rules reality lives by.
An autobiography cannot be omniscient. We cannot know what other people are thinking within the constraints of the real world. Sure, people will tell you. And sure, you may trust them. And they may even be truthful. But you cannot know for sure. Not in reality. Fiction, however, guarantees a certainty. It guarantees truth. It’s a vast canvas free of guesswork and full of autonomy.
I’ve gone a tangent but it is not without good reason. Let us re-center.
What would your book be?
Take the stories of your life and build upon them as if you are trying to impress a new friend. Exaggerate. Embellish. What’s another e- word? Elevate. Oh, a positive connotation. I rather like that.
Elevate your truths in fiction. It is not lying if you never claim it to be real. And who wants real? I don’t want real. I want to feel. I want to cry – and a tear shed for fiction is no less a tear. Do not let anyone tell you that a story needs reality.
It is reality that needs a story.
What is yours?