My Fictional Life

My life is filled with internal dialog.  When my attention is no longer needed for a specific task my mind wanders and I ask myself questions.  Tonight, while wandering toward my office I asked myself why I love fiction.  I love fiction because it is the way I live my life. 

I grew up in a family where limitations were announced as warning signs for possible failure.  In an effort to prevent me from doing things thought to be beyond my capability, it created a belief that everything was impossible.  As I got older, and was blessed with several successes along the way, I started to believe that anything was possible.  As ridiculously motivational speakery as it sounds, I believe it is true.  The reasons I believe it is true is an entirely different blog post, but let's just start with the fact that I truly believe anything is possible. 

This is why I love fiction; it is a dry run on a possiblity.  Some stories I would prefer not to actually live out, such as one of my favorite stories - Crime and Punishment.  Other's I've filed away as possibilities in a file at the back of my mind labeled "Someday/Maybe."  Some supernatural themes still remain delightfully fictional, but remove or replace the vampires and that could totally happen.   

The only thing more fun than reading an adventure as a possible blueprint for the future is designing the blueprint yourself.  This is why I started taking creative writing classes last summer and have made daily writing a habit.  Like planning a vacation, I select the venue, populate it with people I find interesting, add complications that I know I'm going to solve, and watch gaps fill the story in the most amazing ways. 

I am still far from novelist, or even a writer worth more than my own family's admiration.  Regardless, the process of learning how to make my own fictional worlds to play around is one of the most rewarding things I have ever done.  With that thought, I have some writing to do . . .