The Stories We Choose

The other day, my mother told me "you are still angry, which is why your story is also full of intense and violent emotion," referring to the very grim, heavy tone and mood in Without Moonlight. It impressed me really because it rang true. My heart is still very heavy wih anger, even rage, at the things happening not only in my country but also generally in the world. I won't go into those, because this is not the point of this article. Suffice to say that if I scratch the surface of my feelings, I do find all my ache at the injustice, human pain and institutionalized sadism in administrations very acute. And it seeps into my story, which I picked to tell because it was the ONLY story I could tell at the time I started it, back in 2010, and it remains one of the main stories I need to tell.

I think in a lot of ways no creator can truly avoid that- no matter what the genre of the story. We write not only what we know (one way or the other) but also what we feel, or what we dream, or wish for or desire. Stories offer us innumerable opportunities as well as a safety we don't necessarily feel in real life. Even if we're telling the grimmest tale, in which nobody survives unscathed or even survives at all, there is the safety of control, because it's our story and as it plays out we get a sort of catharsis by allowing the things in our mind and our heart manifest.

And it doesn't have to be deep or existential- in the flimsiest fanfiction where your self insert causes the main character to be smitten while he/she saves the day rather than the other way round, it still is a story that allows us to explore (and indulge) in the things we want and need at the time we're telling the story.

It's for that reason that if one is aware of an author's life, the books he/she has written take on more nuance, letting us see into that author's own heart and mind just as much as we've given him/her access to ours.

I am sure that if my anger is soothed, the story I will tell will be different in tone, even if it's about the same things or issues. I probably will choose a different story to tell altogether.

What about you? What stories do you choose to tell?

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