Do current events influence your ideas for your books and stories?
Pull up some chairs, ladies and gents,
And I’ll tell you my thoughts on current events,
I don’t like to include them in my books,
I write fiction—not exposés of real-life crooks,
Or heroic tales of surviving earthquakes,
Reality doesn’t a good story make,
An actual thing can be a nice seed,
To grow a story people might read,
I do get ideas from what may happen in life,
But I steer clear of true war-torn strife,
I make it up! I create!
I spin tales! I conflate!
Fabrication! Imagination!
Fantasmagorification!
Why be tethered to what’s in the news?
Why feel constrained by what is so true?
By the time the book hits, it’s been a long time,
Since the disaster or scandal or newsworthy crime,
Most people don’t remember the when,
Or even what happened way, way, way back then,
So I don’t rip stories from the screaming headlines,
Instead, I rip things from my super-deranged mind!
(Dr. Suess’s birthday is next week, so… my early birthday tribute.)
(This entry is “simul-posted” on Criminal Minds.)
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1 comment:
I don't know, Alan -- I suspect a lot of my wacky ideas are initially triggered by news stories or real life events and then my imagination twists and molds them to feel like fiction. It's hard to ignore these influences unless I turn off the TV, shred the newspaper, and stay off the internet.
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