Meanwhile, wanted to let you know that because of the cool comments I got on my art/visual or written journaling post last week, I have constructed a new piece … truly hope you sound in, as I quoted you (hee).
http://mermaidtango.blogspot.com/2010/02/competition-or-collaboration-saga.html

“I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.

“Here is the happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, I’m left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief.

“Here is the story truth. He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay in the center of a red clay trail near the village of My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye was a star-shaped hole. I killed him.

“What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.”

Do you know about Japanese New Year’s Postcards, nengajo? They are sent instead of Christmas cards, all are delivered by the post office on New Year’s Day itself, and many Japanese design their own cards to send. http://japanese.about.com/library/weekly/aa120900a.htm

Apparently painting ones own postcards as travel souvenirs is also very popular in Japan. http://www.stutler.cc/sketching/articles/postcard.html

As always Vivian, you were ahead of your time.

Fiction is a tricky beast. I think that the best fiction comes from authors who are exquisite observers of the “real” world around them who have also spent many hours contemplating philosophies and psychologies. The best fiction writers then turn those observations into stories that illuminate the absurdities, the depths of emotion and the banalities of our human condition in unexpected ways. The craft of creating outstanding fiction is amazing to me, and rare.

Did you ever read the classic Ray Bradbury book, Dandelion Wine? For some reason, that one just popped into my head. For me, just thinking about that book conjures up vivid colors, flavors, smells, air textures and sounds and feelings.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes of his:

“Writing allows people who are patient and industrious to revise their stupidity, to edit themselves into something resembling intelligence.”

It goes well with a quote from Larry McMurtry that I also like:

“The difference between life and art is life has no editor.”

They both seem to relate to what you’re saying, the need to edit things into something coherent, whether it’s a single page, or the whole book. Right?

As someone who writes novels (but won’t call herself a novelist because it’s a conferred title and not a job), I do both: create a life for people I see in restaurants, the grocery store (I stare at what they put on the conveyer belt so long it borders on rudeness), at traffic lights (a nose-picker!). I envision a life for that person, but also study their things, thinking that one might be an endowed object–like the ratty coin purse in the Coach bag. Was it the last Christmas present given to her by her father before he died?

I will tell you it is trying living with someone who writes fiction. Just ask my husband who would rather I listened to him in the restaurant instead of watching me strain my ears backward to hear the conversation in the next booth.