Monday, May 16, 2011

The Creative Process

I wonder whether one needs to make up an entire story, from head to toe, for it to be deemed fiction. Why not just dye the hair, give it a nosejob, and a facial, paint the nails and put some make up on reality? Doesn't that qualify as fiction too?

If it does qualify as fiction, then I suppose all the stories we tell of our own lives are fictitious. As we repeat the same story over and over again, — the one about escaping from a crazed subway mugger, or the one about the time I got so drunk that I ended up kicking a vending machine open, — every single time... we add new details, change emotions, change the whole grand scope of the event.

Doesn't that qualify as fiction? Isn't that creative? Because if it is, then everything I've written here is fiction, and if it isn't, then nothing here is creative.