The Fiction We Live

I have written novel after novel, convinced I was writing fiction. I lost myself for hours, letting everything spill onto the page. After, I felt absolved and heard, though no one read it. It was like expelling all the heaviness on the good writing days. On the bad, I scrambled to put all the memories away. It was those days that made me avoid the good writing days.

Years later, I began reading all those old manuscripts. The characters made me smile, and the storylines felt like another dimension. But throughout the books, I saw myself there—at 20, 28, and 35, and not at my various stages as a writer. I saw my story. There was a coming-of-age work about a late bloomer, historical fiction where I exorcized my inner guilt, and a piece where a woman has her old identity crash down after a tragic event.

I did not write the books for an audience. It felt like a waste of time. I had spent years creating novels that no one would ever read. After all this self-awareness emerged, the report wasn’t great. I had to let go, reboot, and learn how to live from a new vantage point. There was more work to be done.

We all have some work of fiction in our lives. When we are falling apart, we say we are fine. We have things under control but are terrified, and we say we have forgotten the past when it is always right over our shoulder. I wouldn’t have seen old programming clunking in my brain if I hadn’t written these works and then dared to face them later. I wouldn’t have seen the choices I made from a limited space. Time had sped up, but I still had the brake on.

It was the writing that woke me up. I faced what had been there all along. It was freeing once I let go. To date, I’m still crafting my new story.