When I Am Gone
and someone mentions me.
I would like the conversation to be roughly like this.
“Yea, I think he just made stuff up all the time.”
“Really! What a jerk.”
“Couldn't believe a word he said…”
“You are right, I'm sure, but then sometimes he would say something that was really right on the money. you know, something you could take to heart and live by.”
“Yea, I guess.”
“The hard part was knowing which was which.”
I do sometimes feel I have a fiction brain trapped in a non-fiction body.
Knowing which is which
Though I write both fiction and non-fiction, I have four sources for a non-fiction book or an article.
- My experience
- Research
- My imagination
- Any combination of the first three
And number four is the red-headed stepson of number three, so in some schools of thought, it doesn’t count as a separate item at all.
The older I get, the more I have of 1, and 3, so the less I need of number 2.
In other words, if I am called on to create about any of the many endeavors that have occupied my life so far, I would be in a position to drone on and on endlessly.
But ask me to create regarding a topic new to me, and I would have to do some research or double up on the imagination.
So for you geometry nuts, those three points describe and locate the plane of my existence. It’s long and wide, but quite shallow, something you could only tell from one tiny viewpoint at the edge.
Viewed from any other angle, you would remark as to the vastness of it.
You will get what you need
The idea, here, is that when starting any project, you have the same three building blocks available to you.
In your position, you may have to do more research than someone else, but the results can still be the same using different amounts of the same three components.
And please allow yourself time to fit all this in when someone mentions my name.
Take this quick quiz to see if you too, can make it as a writer…
