I Reject Your Reality

I don't write nonfiction.

On at least two occasions, someone has said to me, "Oh, you're a writer? You should write my tragic real life story." And then I have to find a nice way to say that I don't want to do that. I'm not interested in the confines of reality. That's not really my kind of thing.

What I really want to say is that their story is not interesting to me, and I don't want to write it. But that makes me sound like a dick. So I just have to awkwardly try to convince them to drop it.

I don't want to write a story that's about a real person who is then going to read the story. That's way too much pressure. I want to reserve the right to kill someone off, or let them live, or redeem the villain, or give a minor character a bigger role. Nonfiction prevents you from mucking about with things. You have to write what happened, and only what happened. I want no part of that.

Basically, anytime anyone says, "You should write about x," I'm out. Don't tell me what to do. I'll write what I want. This even comes up in fiction writing. I'll be in the midst of a story, and someone will tell me, "This should happen next," and I'm like, "That's not how the story goes," and then all of a sudden I'm ungrateful for not accepting their input?

But nonfiction is all someone saying "This should happen next," whether I like it or not. No thanks. Why would I want to be a part of something that I have no control over? At that point, I'm just a scribe, writing down what they want, and there's no me in it. I'm just a glorified spellcheck. People just don't want to write their own stories because they don't know formatting or grammar.

I want my own invented realities. I want to make the rules. I want to direct the narrative as I see fit.

I don't know why being a writer means you apparently have to write everything. I write fiction. I'm not a poet, or a journalist, or a biographer. People seem to think I should be, but I'm not. I have a very particular set of skills, you might say. I invent characters, and then I murder them. Or, at least, I throw them into wild situations they are woefully unprepared for, and they make lame jokes and try to make it out unscathed.

I just wish that people would leave me to do what I want, the way I want. I'm just trying to do something creative.

I'll see you next week.