Why?

This is from Holly Lisle's Finding Your Themes:

Writing fiction is about telling stories . . . but what is telling stories about? When you tell someone a story, why are you doing this? What compels you to create lies that have about them the ring of truth; what drives you to invent people and places and events and create a context that pulls them all together and makes them seem real?

When you're creating fiction, at heart you are searching for ways to create order in the universe. You are digging into your core beliefs on how the world works, and running imaginary people through a trial universe built on these beliefs to see how both the people and the beliefs stand up under pressure. People who write fiction tend not to accept the world at face value -- in general, they are the people who always got in trouble when they were little for asking "Why?" one time too many about something that, to everyone else, seemed pretty obvious.

When you started writing fiction, you probably did so at about the same time that you discovered that not only did your parents not have all the answers to the universe, but neither did anybody else. You discovered that, if you wanted an answer to that still-nagging "Why?" you were going to have to find the answer yourself.

Writing fiction is the act of questioning the silent, unanswering infinite and demanding that the infinite cough up a reply . . . and hurry up about it, too. It is the ultimate defiance of that stock parental response, "Because I said so." Writing fiction is standing on the edge of the abyss of ignorance, looking across at the cliffs on the other side, and saying, "With nothing but words, I am going to build myself a bridge that takes me from here to there . . . and when I'm done, other people will be able to cross over that same bridge." It's an act of ultimate hubris, but of ultimate courage, too, because the abyss can eat you, and will if you slip.

So which bridges are worth building? You can't cover the whole abyss. You can run a thousand lines from one side to the other if you live long enough, and you won't even cast a shadow on the voracious ignorance that lies beneath. All you can do is span the darkness with your slender threads, and build them strong enough that people can traverse them, and make them interesting enough that people will take the risk.

Which bridges are worth risking life and limb and hope and soul to create? Only those that take you to someplace you have not yet been.

And how do you decide which bridges those might be? You ask yourself the following question: To what questions in life have I not yet found a satisfactory answer?

I don't know about the rest of you, but this is very true for me. I'm still asking "why?" in every story I write. I ask that question every day. I was the kid who forever asked "why?", and drove everyone nuts. The desire to know the answers to things is what makes me a research geek. It's what makes me so interested in hearing the stories of certain people. The reason I find some people so interesting.

What makes one person capable of horrible things and another willing to risk their own life for somebody else? What makes one person driven and another complacent?

I've always been interested in people who are extraordinary in some way. My first husband is an amazingly talented artist. My best friend since high school is highly intelligent and has a gift for healing emotionally wounded people.

My fella has an enormous heart and is extremely empathetic. He has the warmest eyes I've ever seen, and a smile to match. He has the sunniest disposition of anyone I know, and a fantastic sense of humor. He's smart as hell and intuitive, able to read people pretty quickly. He has an innate understand of how mechanical things work, a quality I'm happy to see in our son, as well.

What makes one person extraordinary in some way, and another ordinary in pretty much every way? What makes a basically good person slip over to the dark side? Or a pretty terrible person do something wonderful or heroic?

Some people have a shine to them. You know them when you meet them. Often you can even pick them out just on sight. They sparkle in some way. They have a unique presence. A special something which sets them apart. Is that shine something they were born with or something they developed later? I'm always facinated by that.

My stories always have questions I want answers to. Another question I find myself asking is "what if?"

But that's for another post. New playlist. It's a mish-mash.