Give me Fiction!

I hate real stories. It’s so depressing. When I read a book, I want to be transported to another dimension. I want to believe that the impossible is possible, that perfection is normal and that happy endings occur.

South African fiction for me tends to be too real. Too depressing. Apparently Spud is good, but the last time I listen to someone, about an SA book I was sorely disappointed.

There is something about Fiction. You wonder about every character, every word and what part of the writer is hidden in them. That is the best thing about fiction for me. Science Fiction , Action, Romance...all of it. It is very difficult for a good writer not to write pieces of themselves in their work. “Write what you know”, I heard that in movie or somewhere before. It makes sense to me.

I believe that a writers emotions should be real, the events does not really need to be. And you can sort figure out, which writer writes of pain but has not really been in love.

I went to a presentation once where a Professor in History was delivering a paper about memory and fiction in History. Basically he was asking how much of what we remember is fictionalised and how much is real, and how can Historians tell the difference.

The first rule in ethnography is that the researcher is as much part of the story as the informants. And this I think is a very important part in storytelling. You cannot really tell a ‘truthful’ story. Not really, because your version of the truth and the other participants will be different. Because we don’t all understand the same emotions the same way. Therefore, you can never really write non-fiction biography of your life. How do we as the readers know that the writer is not bending the truth? Because it is very difficult to write without letting the work take you where it needs to go.

I don’t like non-fiction. I accept Historical accounts with a whole spoonful of salt and everything else to me (besides academic work) is a version of fiction. It’s just people won’t admit to it.

Give me Fiction! Let me dive into the words; let it transport me to adventures beyond my imagination! Let me dream! *sigh*

But you see the problem is that fiction killed us.

Instead of us watching fiction and thinking, ‘wow, can you imagine if life was really like that’ we thinking to ourselves ‘wow, that is actually possible’.

When did this happen? When did fiction become reality? While I love fiction and I think it has the ability to show us reality in a way that we never seen before, I do not for one second think any of it is actually really possible.

Fiction has ruined us to a great degree. We have lost touch with what is real, normal and in the moment. While I love to fly off to Never Never land, the truth is when I get back; there are dishes for me to wash. There are rooms that need to be cleaned. Life needs to be lived.

I took the name Trinity, because I loved the character Trinity in the Matrix. But I look at fiction differently now so I’ve changed my name on the blog. I will always love fiction, but I think I’ve realised that we can get too caught up in it, and not live real life.