Go Ahead and Lie! You'll Feel Better.

Alice – (f) A-liss; of English/Germ origin; meaning: the truthful one

I find this definition a little ironic given the fact that I’m a fiction writer. Because from my experience, the number one rule of writing is learn to lie.

Okay, so maybe this isn’t the number one rule. But it’s up there.

When I was young (I’m talking elementary school), I was a chronic liar. It wasn’t like I woke up every morning telling myself I was going to lie. It’s just that lying came a lot easier to me than the truth did. I would lie about insignificant things, like what I had for breakfast or what I did over summer break. But I would about significant things too, inventing grandiose stories about a family I didn’t have or people I’d never met.

I don’t think I lied like this because I had malicious intentions or because I didn’t like my life. (I was a pretty happy kid.) I think I lied like this because I knew that these things were true for other people. I liked to imagine what it would be like if they were true for me. And while lying can be really inconvenient in real life (I realized this after an excruciatingly long period of silent lunch, a punishment given for lying to my teacher), this is the reason I love to write. Lying is liberating. It gives me permission to think beyond what is real; it gives me permission to think about what could be real.

One of my best friends is a girl I met in second grade and I think one of the reasons I loved her so much from the start was she gave me permission to lie. We lied to each other constantly. We told each other our parents were dead, that we’d met witches, that we were actually magical creatures trapped in human bodies, that we could read minds. We made up so many lies that sometimes our lies got mixed up and we were able to catch each other on them. That’s when I realized I had to write these lies down to keep track of them. 

So, really, it’s her fault I write. (And for that I'll always owe her one. : ) )We don't still lie to each other anymore, but she is still someone I know I can talk to about what I love to do - write.

Being a good liar is important no matter what I’m writing. And no matter how many times I do it, the lying (er…writing) never gets old.

I didn’t tell you all of this to make you think I’m going to lie to you – I got over the chronic liar part, I promise. I just wanted to give you some background on how I started writing. I’ve experimented with a lot of different genres and at this point I’m partial to women’s fiction and sci-fi or dystopian, aimed at a young adult audience. In the past, I’ve written a lot of romance as well, which has given me insight into that genre and how to incorporate it into other genres. I’ve also been working with short fiction a lot recently. But I’m also an avid reader, and no genre is out of the question for experimentation. (I feel like that statement should be followed by a “muah hahaha.”)

Before I let you go, I wanted to share the ending of one of my favorite short stories, River of Names by Dorothy Allison. (Heads up if you actually read the whole thing: it comes from a really dark and twisted place. You’ve been warned.)

            

Jesse puts her hands behind my neck, smiles and says, “You tell the funniest stories.” 

“Yeah,” I tell her. “But I lie.”

The question is, do you believe me?