Non-Fiction.
"Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth."
-Benjamin Disraeli
"Each of us is a book waiting to be written, and that book, if written, results in a person explained.”
-Thomas M. Cirignano, The Constant Outsider
"There's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there's no word describing that."
-Aleksandar Hemon
Episode 62.
Nonfiction: Writing that is about facts and real events- Merriam-Webster. Nonfiction: Story that is based on true events and information- Dictionary.com
So, nonfiction is real and true; genuine and authentic.
Then why the NON- in nonfiction?
Why does this writing of reality have a negative existence?
Why is a story of truth given the label of a double negative?
Non-Fiction is Non-not true.
Isn't there a word other than “nonfiction” to encompass writing about facts, real events, and real people? A "positive" word, in contrast to the "non" of non-fiction...
Why do I care? Why does it irk me? Especially in the set and setting of my current love-affair with fiction- the actual "non"- non-truth, non-fact, non-real. I am basking in the stories of fictional characters, their relationships, their interactions...based in historical reality, but "made up"... Fiction.
Maybe I care because I value genuine and authentic, and I want to give non-fiction a legitimate label to portray this. Things become real when they have a label, a name, a title. Perhaps I care because I am a speech-language pathologist and have spent my schooling and career focused intently on communication sciences and disorders, beginning my college freshman year in 1996, and punctuated throughout hospital treatments with patients, interactions with medical professionals, pacification of families, training of staff...
At the center of all I have done, is communication. Words.
Words. How we relate. How we engage. How we share. How we offer. How we love. Words. Words carry meaning. We have little control over things of this world, but one thing we choose, are the words we use. Through words, we can be implicit or explicit. We can craft or create. We can expand and pronounce. We can profess and proclaim.
Through words, we can heal, reassure, compliment, welcome, soothe, settle, enhance, create, bond, connect...We can appreciate the freedoms that are bound to the process of communication.
So, in considering the opposing nature of fiction vs nonfiction, just as one might contrast a lover or a fighter, the darkness or the light, perhaps we come up with some substitute name for nonfiction? A word that signifies truth in writing, that is not just a non-falsehood.
Or maybe it doesn't matter- because the lines of fiction and nonfiction are blurred. Maybe it doesn't matter because reality is just an ecstatic dance and fantasy is a malleable fabric of our existence. Maybe there is something solid in the word nonfiction- that it embodies the inherent element of fiction in its name- maintaining our longing for a creative vision, within the verity of life. Maybe fiction and nonfiction are unreservedly intertwined so we don't take it all so damn seriously.
The fiction book I am currently reading may illuminate this most brilliantly...
“Just because it’s made up, doesn’t mean it isn’t real,” said Penn. “Made up is the most powerful real there is.”
-Laurie Frankel, This Is How It Always Is
With all the real and magical Love,
Jessica
"There are no facts, only interpretations."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
"Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing."
-Joan Didion
"Ironically, successful nonfiction has to be unbelievable, while successful fiction must be believable."
-Jerry B. Jenkins
Do it all with Love. Nothing is promised. But everything is workable.
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