Saravision

One of my dearest writing friends, Jack Campbell, Jr., told me once that there is nothing fictional about fiction. “Fiction is just a distortion of our dreams and nightmares.” Every plot, every character, every snippet of dialog contains a part of me. If you were to dissect everything I had ever written and put it all together, you would know me better than my closest friends and family who haven’t ever read any of my work. Especially if you were a writer.

Writers understand what goes into writing. We understand each other on a level our normal friends and family never could. They see us in our day to day lives, in a real life setting, making the most out of the lives we are given, while other writers can see the world how we envision it by looking at what we’ve created. They can interpret what is hidden deep within our subconscious mind. Zero drafts in particular are the most telling – they are almost flow of consciousness style writing, seen before the author has a chance to edit or censor their thoughts.

There really aren’t new ideas as far as stories. Everything has been done. The difference is every single one of us has a different view of the world. Our backgrounds shape who we are which in turn shapes how we write or even what we write about. Only I can tell a story a certain way. It is my point of view that makes it unique. A cliché might be cliché, but my particular spin on it makes it somewhat new and different.

Everything in my life has crept into my writing. My hopes and dreams, as Jack said. My bitterness, my pain, my happiness, my sense of humor. The people I know, the conversations I’ve had. My writing is an amalgamation of everything I’ve read or watched or listened to chewed up and spat back out. It’s the world seen through my particular rose-colored glasses. When you read something I’ve written, you put on my glasses and see the world in the particular tint that I see it.

Saravision.

It may not always be obvious, but what I write is me. Distorted, translucent, inverted or twisted, substituted or hyperbolic. Everything I write is a seed taken from something of myself and cultivated into something somewhat recognizable, if you know what to look for.