Today I’m having lunch with a friend, Tricia Sutton, who’s a fellow writer. A year ago, that would have been impossible. One, because I’d never met her, and two, because the only other writers I knew were family members. I was crafting jewelry then, instead of stories. But a series of vivid dreams, and a friend’s suggestion that I could turn them into stories, started a new cycle in my life … or restarted an old cycle, depending on how you look at it.
In the mysterious ways these things happen, it was just as well I started writing full-time then because, two months later, I broke a bone in my dominant hand and wasn’t able to use my jewelry tools again until recently. I could, however, type—one handed, for a while, but still.
So, I’m thinking about cycles and how we continually change and renew ourselves. Reinvent ourselves, even. I’ve met so many new people in this new writing world and one of them recently blogged about how we’re in a constant state of change down to our daily cell renewal. I love that thought: the fluidity of our being. Though, if it could be arranged, I’d like to do a one-time complete cell exchange, say, with Mariska Hargitay.
Then, I thought about our memories, which are only our perceptions of things that once happened, once existed, and how we are forming a memory right this instant as time passes through us like a ghost. This led me to question the nature of fiction writing, and whether what we create with words is any less real than what we perceive, which sounds eerily like the late night conversations I used to have with my third son, soooo … that probably means it’s time to shut up.
Happy writing today, people.
Linda Cassidy Lewis 
Linda,
I was recently driving and looked out my window to look at Jerry’s house.
a) Jerry’s house exists only in An Organized Life
b) so does Jerry
I did the wadawadawada with my head and regrouped.
Sometimes the things we write are just as real as the things we live. Sometimes they are the same thing, thinly disguised.
hugs!
Karen :0)
p.s. An Organized Life is the title of my novel…just in case that wasn’t painfully obvious in context.
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You know, I’m convinced that the people, houses, and restaurants in this novel really do exist somewhere. It just seems right to me. 😉
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“I thought about our memories, which are only our perceptions of things that once happened, once existed, and how we are forming a memory right this instant as time passes through us like a ghost.”
That’s one gorgeous sentence. The reminiscent narrator is one of my favorites for fiction and it’s the foundation for creative nonfiction. Memory is such a fascinating thing, and in writing fiction we sometimes come very close to the truth (such as when Amy Tan discovered she had written something about a character in one of her novels that had actually happened to her grandmother — a family secret that she’d not known).
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Thanks for visiting, Dory. I’m just back from visiting yours and will return. And thank you for the compliment on my “gorgeous” sentence. I just had to quote that, because it’s not something I hear every day. 🙂
I think we write fiction, consciously or subconsciously, to discover our truths. By giving ourselves that distance, we can be more honest in our thoughts and emotions.
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