Lilith Saintcrow

I never truckled; I never took off the hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. By God, I told them the truth. –Frank Norris, author of McTeague

Synchronicity gave me my Friday post this week. I read the above quote in a book of Stephen King’s essays on writing, and thought huh, I agree with that. Then, yesterday morning, my sister called. In the course of an hour-long chat she asked if I ever felt like I was, well, exposing myself too much in my books. If I ever felt scared that I was showing too much and that people would know me too well in them.

Last night after tacos were eaten and the kitchen (mostly) cleaned, my friend TrashGlam[1] and I got on the subject of JT Leroy and the Love and Consequences hoax. During the consumption of a bottle of very good red, we moved on to the importance of Truth in fiction, what constituted Truth, what did not, and various other things.

Voila. A Friday writing post is born.

The job of any writer is to be as true as possible. A memoir writer needs to stick closely to the Truth as we think of it in our daily lives–the seasoning of personal myth or personal perception of events should not be larger than the serving of actual events that could theoretically be verified. This sneaks up on a tricky question of human memory and personal mythologizing, which is not the point of this post. For the purposes of this essay, I am going to be using the word “truth” in several ways, and I’m going to be talking about the writing of fiction, not memoirs.

Okay, disclaimers done.

In V for Vendetta, Evie says “Artists use lies to tell the truth; politicians use lies to cover truth up.” I agree with this wholeheartedly. The appeal of a novel or a character is largely how far the author permits herself[2] to tell the truth.

Of course I do not believe I am Dante Valentine, or Jill Kismet, or any other character of mine. On that path lies madness. But Dante, Jill, Japh, Perry, Kaia, Darik, and all the rest are true people to me. They are characters with flaws and strong points, and the things that happen to them are “real” and “true” insofar as I thought seriously about the world I had created, the consequences of such a world, and the consequences of their actions and personalities inside that world.

These people are as real as I can make them, and they get hurt. They are also, in some ways, aspects of questions and issues that concern me very much. Dante Valentine is on some level about my fear of abandonment and my issues with childhood abuse, not to mention religion, minorities, “chosen” family, and a host of other things. The Watchers and the Society series are me thinking about the problems of love, power, protection, drug addiction, and the justification (if any) of violence. Jill Kismet is about vigilantism, childhood abuse, prostitution, justification of violence–you get the idea. And all my stories hinge somehow on redemption. Even when I am writing to spec, writing with specific guidelines or saleability in mind, I am writing about these issues and themes because they concern me as a human being. So much of writing is, for me, a way to think about these issues, to hold a conversation with myself.

But there is a deeper truth in here.

The ending of Working For The Devil was so hard to write. I knew what the ending had to be, of course–I was pretty sure I was working on a series and had the framework in my head. The only way the framework would hold up is if a Certain Character died.

I did not want that Certain Character to die. My editor did not want that Certain Character to die. My agent, my readers, nobody wanted that Certain Character to kick the bucket.

But he had to. Because it was the essential truth of the story, and I had made a bargain with the Muse and the story. The bargain was I would not truckle. The bargain was that I would tell the truth as best as I knew how, and the truth was that character had to die. There was no way around it. That was the way the story went.

I firmly believe writing is an act of faith, of magic, and of submission. The faith is that this thing, the work, is going to catch you when you fling yourself out into space. Committing wholeheartedly brings out a similar commitment from the work itself. It is an act of magic because every act of creation is an act of magic, with all the power and mystery and danger that holds.

It is an act of submission because you have to trust the work to know what it wants to be, and you cannot force what you think will sell better onto it. Forcing, let’s say, a happy ending onto a story that doesn’t have one is the height of bullshit, and readers will NOT stand for bullshit.

There is an implicit compact between me and the Reader when I set out. I commit to telling the story the best way I know how, and telling it truly. The Reader commits to suspending disbelief for a little while in order to be entertained, in order to enter my imagination and see this new world.

But there are dangers here. It is no less dangerous than the real world, “fiction” notwithstanding. People get hurt. There are monsters under the bed. To write a story is to call into service all the wonder and danger a human being is capable of, and Truth is not only the shield that protects but the blade that cuts.

This is entirely separate from the question of whether or not a Reader will like your book/story/whatever. We’re not talking about personal tastes here. You can tell the story well and truly and there will still be people who don’t like it. That’s normal and natural.

But the chances of you reaching Readers who will like it goes up exponentially when you tell the truth. For the one thing Readers hate is to be bullshitted. To be lied to. BSing your Readers insults their intelligence, and when you’ve asked them to shell out hard-earned cash for your work and given them a handful of bullshit, do you wonder at their fury?

If you tell the truth as best as you know how–staying true to the characters and the story–you will find your readers. A story with a ring of truth will find champions in the unlikeliest places. Your agent and editor will trust you and your story; their passion will get other people excited, and that’s just for starters.

But it is so easy to lie. Why?

Because, as I told my sister, any artistic creation is like stripping yourself naked and going out onto a busy street, screaming Look at me! Look at me! I am not saying it is exhibitionist. I am saying it is an act of marvelous emotional nakedness and vulnerability. I’m sure there are people who think they know me because of the subject matter of my books. I’m sure there are people who feel a shock of kinship with something I’ve described, because they’ve been there and they know what it feels like.

This is what I mean when I say “tell the truth.”

We are pressured to minimize or lie about several things in order to get along socially. In abusive families or relationships, we are outright forced to. It’s not that bad. It was your fault anyway. Quit crying. He doesn’t drink that much. She didn’t mean to break your arm. We are even shamed into feeling like we deserved it somehow, or like we will be ostracized if we dare to tell the things that happened to us.

Every human being is fundamentally alone, and I think this is a huge impetus for art. Art is communication to bridge the gap between our fleshly selves. It is the congress of souls; it is the singing of one consciousness to another and the act of listening all in one. This is what gives art its tremendous transgressive power. And this is why making art is so emotionally fraught.

We always think we are the only ones that have suffered this, or that (here’s the big thing) people will laugh.

I used to feel self-conscious in ballet class until I realized everyone else was equally self-conscious, and worrying about their own barre work to boot. Nobody would have time to worry about my jiggles or mistakes except the teacher, and it was the teacher’s job to worry about those so s/he could tell me how to get better.[3] Everyone was too busy doing their own thing to care about mine. I was worrying over something that was almost nothing.

Still, the feeling that one is going to be laughed at is a powerful deterrent to lowering our guard and getting emotionally naked on the page. To being vulnerable.

And make no mistake, there is vulnerability in art. I don’t worry that people will “know” me anymore. I’m a complex person, and a simple one at the same time. I am a mystery wrapped in several riddles and even more engimas–just like everyone else. Any ammunition someone is going to find in my books is a risk I’m willing to take, and one I’m not overly concerned about.[4]

However.

The Kismet books tear me up inside. Each one is a trip into a heart of darkness, and they require a lot of effort and work. I have to pay attention to them and really think about how to deal with this character and her world, how to tell her story honestly with no truckling…and when she is hit or hurt, I feel it. It exhausts me each time, and each time there comes a point in the story when I have to just let go and trust that the work is going to carry itself, that the book is going to finish itself, that all this will be worthwhile and not just wasted time and effort. that I haven’t just been running around in circles barking at my own tail, so to speak.

It is very hard to trust. Especially in the face of vulnerability, the idea that people will laugh at you, or the naysaying voices in your head that ask you who the hell you think you are anyway, this isn’t very good, it’s stupid and–again–everyone is going to laugh at you.

Getting technically better–getting your grammar down, dealing with copyedits and revisions, etc.–is the easy part. Learning to take off your clothes every time and run down the street screaming is the not-so-easy part. Learning to take the risk of people pointing and laughing, learning to fling yourself out into space and hope like hell the story catches you…

It’s no wonder we’re afraid.

But the feeling of having gotten to the end of the book, having done it honestly with no truckling, of having flung yourself out into space and had the strong and gentle hands of the divine work catch you and bring you safely to a landing on the other side…

…that, my friends, is the purest magic. It requires much, but it gives so much more in return. And each time we stand on the other side of the work, breathing heavily and knowing we have finished, the glory of it is so big that we look back and think well, that wasn’t so bad, I worried for nothing.

Then we forget until next time. Throwing yourself out there never gets any easier, but the joy of being caught never gets any less either. I guess there’s a metaphor for life in there, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit around wondering about it.

Not when there’s work to be done. *grin*

So, dear Reader and dearest fellow writers, here comes the most important part of this long rambling post. It’s summed up in four little words.

What do you think?

[1] Yes, this is a pseudonym, in keeping with my commitment to privacy.
[2] Himself, herself, whatever.
[3] The feeling got better, but it has never entirely gone away. I do not think it ever will.
[4] For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I’m writing fiction. Heh.

Related posts:

1. Truth Is A Consequence
2. So Close…And So Creeped Out
3. The Mystery of the Mask

This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Real Life, Writing (About). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.