Under the microscope

This might come as a shock to people; but I’m really not very good about writing non-fiction.

I know, a writer is suppose to be well rounded… and mostly I am. But something about pouring out my thinking and my emotions into word form pushes a kind of imaginary border in my psyche. Nobody wants to read about the crazy women ranting about her cats or the bad poetry of a chronically depressed pseudo-goth. They especially don’t want to read laundry lists of personal facts and carefully kept diaries of emotional minutiae. People want to be entertained, engaged and informed.

I find it hard to write a blog about daily life, aside from a few details it’s not an exciting life; I’m not a movie star, or a drug dealer, or a soldier or even a person with any fame of consequence. I’m just a writer. I observe life and I feel uncomfortable when I am the one whose life is being observed. Perhaps if I spoke about myself in third person… or if I adopted an elaborate persona I would feel more at ease.

I gave this some thought, I mean a really solid 5 minutes of thought and came to the conclusion that I did not want to be the ant under the microscope. I was thinking about this in terms of colorful metaphors and whimsical colloquialisms and found a few that could be considered viable. Then I discarded them in favor of plain simple language. Yes life is a journey we all share… from start to finish; but the journey is not meant to be alone. It’s meant to be shared with our friends, lovers, family, enemies, rivals and even complete strangers. It’s a meandering story that many of us choose not to share… or in some cases we share only bits and pieces taking the whole of the story to our graves.

Because our journey is not a solitary one I decided my blog will reflect that, more of my insights and stories will be from or about others. I avoided this in the past because I was fearful I would hurt or alienate people. There is also the fact that I’m conceited and like hearing about myself; which of course is perfectly healthy in a fictioneer. (Although in truth: worrisome in a blogger) Both of those concerns can be overlooked in the interests of good storytelling. After all a rich story must have a great many characters, the conflicts between them must be well documented and the plot must move inexorably towards it’s climatic conclusion. In those essential rules there is no difference between writing the absurdities of life or penning a well conceived fiction.