I posed a question... Is there a contrast between the truth of our lives and the story we tell of our existence? It strikes me now that this is a question that requires a spot of individual contextualising. For the sake of this post, the context is this: as writers, each story we tell begins, at some level, with us. It is born of us. It is indelibly linked to our experience and our concept of who we are. We are going to accept, for now, that a writer is a born storyteller, embued from first thought with the instinct to take reality and shape, contort, twist and disseminate it until it lies in broken, but more fascinating, fragments at our feet. Benevolently then, as nurturing onlookers attempt to understand what we are doing, we sidestep all confusion, carefully scoop the wreckage up and mould the pieces back together to present it as our 'story'.
As a whole, the story is unrecognisable as its former self. It is more 'significant' than the truth, as John Cheever notes when assessing the effect of the 'rearranging (of) facts' that was an inherent part of his storytelling self. This allows us to look friends and family square in the eye and say, 'Of course it wasn't based upon you'. Take an individual piece of that same story, however, and subject it to scrutiny and the more insignificant, but truthful seed of our original existence reveals itself: still living, still able to bear more fruitful labours under the misaprehension of fiction. Perhaps, franchise fans, for that all important sequel...
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