The Woes of a Fiction Writer

Last week I met a guy. He asked me if I ever had my heart-broken. I said no. Then, he hinted it’s alright if that’s the case. He even used astrology (my palm lines) to prove that I was nursing a broken heart from the past.

Now, I was perplexed. I have never been through a heartbreak. I’m a happy-go-lucky girl. Not the weepy, depressed kind. Why would anyone think that I was hiding a heartache?

The mystery remained till I checked my last post—the beating heart complete with a haiku on heartbreak. And that’s why I don’t share blog links with my acquaintances.

Well, to give the guy his due, he had asked me before why I haven’t written any posts last few months. My answer: “I wasn’t in the mood. I just don’t want to talk about it.” So I can understand if he thought no writing equals to depressed. The truth is I was being dramatic. I didn’t write because I was busy with clinic and other stuff related to dentistry.

To come back to my point, my writing is not all about me. I’m a fiction writer. We fiction writers have very high imagination and empathy. If I watch an episode of saas-bahu, I can write a whole story about the tortures of a daughter-in-law. If I talk to my pregnant friend, I can write about the troubles of pregnancy without ever becoming pregnant. A child misbehaving in a supermarket—a parenting article is born.

My fiction, and even non-fiction articles are not about my life. They are about people I encounter in my life. So, if I met you somewhere my story might be about you, but not me. Unless I specifically write that the post is about me, it is never me.

But people assume that my writing is me. That, I have gone through everything which they find in my writings. Most of the time, this confuses me because I have no idea what they’re talking about, and sometimes, it irritates me.

Fiction is just fiction. It’s a fantasy about how I wish the world was, or how I perceive the world. It’s to entertain you, to make you think, to make you feel better. The poem, stories are not real. Even the non-fiction (unless autobiographical) is my opinion about the world, not about my life.

We writers are great people to know. We’re as much fun as our writings. If you assume that our writings are us, then you’re losing out on knowing a wonderful person, because you assume you already know everything about us.

Have you recently met a fiction writer? Beware, you might appear in their story with all your traits, and a completely different life/scenario 128521;