Art Imitates Life
By Dave
July 9th, 2008 | Leave a comment
One of the best parts about writing is the ability to create entire families, cities and even worlds with the tap of a keyboard or stroke of a pen. Jacqueline Woodson (CLICK HERE) talks about getting in trouble for telling lies in school. Her teacher said if she wrote the lies down, they become fiction.
What power.
And what makes it such a powerful medium of expression is that it is so accessible. You don’t need a set of paints or brushes; you don’t need an instrument. Like Benjamin Disraeli, if you don’t have anything that you like to read, you can just write something you do.
It’s hard sometimes as a journalist to keep the fiction and the nonfiction separate. It’s not that I want to fabricate things in the articles I write, but part of my job is to meet interesting people who have had great adventures. They’re ready-made characters for a book, and sometimes I just want to rearrange their stories for more punch and drama, to add a little more detail and dialogue. But I guess that’s what they call a jumping off point; art imitates life, right?
– Chuck Bown, on Feathers
