Writers of non-fiction, like journalists, will sometimes leave reality behind and dip into the “freedom” of fiction. I’ve heard them use that word: freedom. Lucky so-and-so’s I’d think… I only wish I could feel freedom in inventing a story. In fact, I’m very much like Mary Karr who wrote: “I just have zero talent for making stuff up. While I adore the short story form, any time I tried penning one myself, everybody was either dead by page two, or morphed back into the person they’d actually evolved from in memory.” (The Art of Memoir, p. 21)
Lately, I’ve been reading Amy Tan’s memoir, Where the Past Begins. She describes her talent for realistic drawing, and I’m annoyed… here again, a writer who is an artist besides? Harrumph! Put a marker in my hand and I freeze the same way one becomes immediately self-conscious before their picture is taken. But Tan explains why she chose writing over being an artist and it has to do with her childhood trauma:
It has to do with what does not happen when I draw. I’ve never experienced a sudden shivery spine-to-brain revelation that what I have drawn is a record of who I am. I don’t mix water-colour paints and think about my changing amalgam of beliefs, confusion, and fears. I don’t do shading with thoughts about death and its growing shadow as the predicted number of actuarial years left to me grows smaller. When I view a bird from an angle instead of in profile, I don’t think of the mistaken views I have held. With practice, I will become better at drawing the eye of a bird or its feet, but I can’t practice having an unexpected reckoning of my soul. All that I have mentioned - what does not happen when I draw - does occur when I write. They occurred in the earliest short stories I wrote when I was thirty-three. Then, as now, they are revelations - ones that are painful, exhilarating, transformative, and lasting in their effects. In my writing, I recognize myself.
Discovering and being able to explain why one writes is fascinating! I enjoy collecting these writerly “raison d’être”s because it shows how in one profession, there is such interesting variety. It also highlights how expanding a talent is linked to personal development. I think that ideas about freedom, in fiction or in art, suppose a kind of ease. I immediately associate art with freedom, but that is not really the case… art in one form or another is exploration and it is work just the same. The method used for the exploration is irrelevant.