[a true liar and other stories]

[reenka]

All right, I'll admit it (not like it's not obvious anyway): I'm addicted to posting on lj. Haha. (Shock, right.) Seriously, I suppose this is why most normal(er) people like, go on y!m or... uh... call up their friends, but I get a certain feeling of 'oh look! I'm communicating!! hahahaha' (...) even though I'm just basically talking to myself, really. But it gets a certain load off, so whatevah.

I was skimming the comments to furiosity's post on why would people keep fandom a secret ('cause like, lying makes you feel guilty, doesn't it? doesn't it??!), and one person said they like to keep secrets, it's their thing (privacy! privacy!). And then my mind went off on a tangent 'cause there's this famous quote by this old dead Jewish writer guy, Isaac Bashevis Singer, "When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer." Hee. And yeah-- I really identified with this when I was little (around 9 or 10), 'cause maaaaan, did I lie about anything and everything when I was that age. For serious; I didn't need a reason, I just needed a crazy story to tell. But I didn't like lying to save my skin; that always made me feel... itchy somehow (though I guess I still do it at times).

I don't think a writer's gift for lying (there's a reason they call it 'telling stories', right?) and wild imagination is the same as the compulsive liar's; I mean, I think a writer is often a good liar to start with (I'm guessing me and ol' Isaac aren't alone), but what I realized when I grew a bit older was-- well, not to put too fine a point on it, but-- basically, you can't be a good writer if you're not into telling the plain unvarnished truth when it would be most powerful. I realized that truth-telling is the writer's calling even if lying is a writer's skill, if that makes sense; the trick is to use one's imagination to make people stop lying-- to themselves most of all-- even if just for a moment, that moment of revelation while reading a really good book that touches you. That moment where the story speaks to you.

I think a chronic liar's stories are just... subtly different somehow. Perhaps it's that they tend to be either self-serving in nature or random at best-- they're not truthful in a way that goes beyond facts and into revealing something deeper; like, my own stories were usually mixtures of desire and wish-fulfillment and half-hidden fears. I think my childhood fibs & fantasies would tell you as much about me as the most unvarnished truth-- and a part of me thinks that if your lies are 'just lies'-- if they're flat somehow-- then you may be good at playing that game, but in the end, the stakes are too small.
    Without that random whimsy, the unrestrained fantasy of a 'true' lie-- instead of inspiring guilt, that sort of lying inspires only a sort of wistful pity in me, perhaps. I keep thinking, moreso the older I get, that if there's a truth that matters to you in your life, whatever that truth is, but fandom would do-- if you don't share it, no matter how dangerous-- if you don't tell it, if you don't try to live it-- you're not so much living a lie; the lie is living you.

...That being as it is, it's just my philosophy, not my religion; no need to convert. I mean, I don't care what other people do; I just realized that the truth is... more interesting to me, whatever form it takes. I don't mean the factual truth. Just. The truth.
~~

Also, I'm reading a number of good fantasy novels lately, but don't know what to do with them. Review? Go on tangents? Praise the slivers of gay? (Yaye! There are slivers of gay!!) Um. ^^;

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yanking this over to one of *my* pet peeves, I wonder if this isn't why on TV whenever someone is a writer they're almost never writers of fiction. Their work always consists of the idea that they are writing the stuff we're seeing in episodes in book form. Which is ironic because that's more on the side of lying, imo. For instance, in one show I watch the character who's the writer I wouldn't trust for one second to give a true account of anything because she's totally self-absorbed. So what you'd get is the liar's version where people are misrepresented to fit the sort of things you said. Or something. But of course the shorthand on the show is always that it's a writer's job to 'tell the truth.' And we know they're doing that because they're telling *real* stories, not those fake stories which are never as good because they're fake. Everyone always winds up coming to the conclusion that you're only a real writer when you're...not really writing, but instead recording what is going on with real people in your life, even if those people happen to be fictional creations made up by someone not writing about his/her own life.

If you can make sense of what I just said--go you!

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Hahah, it actually took took me a few sentences in to know what you mean-- which sort of makes me wonder if this is what people always have to do with me, except a lot worse ^^;;; Eep.
But yeah, it's not just TV-- actually, I was reading a manga with a writer in it, and of course his best/most popular book was the most 'personal' and reflective of the people in his life and his 'real' emotions (even if 'fictionalized'). His boyfriend was sitting there and crying as he read it and he was like, 'well, you must want feedback, but I don't know what I can say about it. But I do think now I like you more than ever.'
...Maybe it's just that otherwise the writers' fiction won't seem... relevant to the story?? Or something?? ER???!

Yeah, I do always think it's sort of missing the point of what most fiction writers do whenever I see fiction writers on TV or in manga or movies or whatever... I mean, sometimes you just never hear anything of what they write (or it's vaguely stated, in some manga, to be 'mystery' or 'sci-fi'), but the writers never seem to act like writers I'd recognize. Which is odd 'cause it's all... written by writers, right? Uh. :> But in those stories where the writer does mysteries or some other 'not really real' genre, usually something happens to make them see the light & write a super-blockbuster with 'Meaning'. Or something.

.......on American TV, though, I suspect all this is tilted to appeal to the understanding of the audience, which forgets that someone actually writes the show. I can only imagine? People talk about actors & directors, even producers, hell-- even make-up people get their moment to shine on HBO specials, but duuuuude, who ever does a special on writers? No one, that's who :))

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

I totally got you (on one read-through). I think it might even be the same in fiction about writers as well, but of course that's much more prevalent on screen. My theory is that it's simpler to show; I recently watched Farewell to Harry and also wondered why telling the story of that Harry was "better" than coming up with one of his own.