Making Things Up

Making things up is a BIG part of who I am. Some of my numerous character flaws come into play here:

1) It is very difficult for me to just say “I don’t know”, stemming from a reputation of being the top of the top (back when our fates were all sealed in primary education.) Whenever I raised my hand, it was with the answer – not a question. I could have shaken this reputation when I moved to Texas in the middle of high school, and NO ONE IN SCHOOL knew about my reputation EXCEPT ME (but you see, that was the problem – I’d read my own press clippings, so to speak.) It has taken me nearly 40 years to get semi-comfortable with “I don’t know.”

2) I’m analytical to a fault, so when someone asks me a question that I don’t really know the answer to, I work out the answer on my feet. This is reflexive, and although I do a pretty good job of thinking things into a reasonably believable answer, I’m sometimes wrong. This is further complicated by my failure to explain that I’m making my best guess (because “I don’t know”), so my answers are remembered a statement of fact rather than supposition.

3) I have an overactive imagination which feeds on and creates unintentional streams of word and image associations. I find my mind wandering off topic far too often (and this is not improving with age.) I can’t admit that I’ve lost focus (and “I don’t know” what we were talking about), so I pretend (former acting skills fully in play) that I’m keeping up.

When confronted with the opportunity to say “I don’t know”, the voices in my head start whispering in a panic: “Quick Bill - make something up!” (a hazard of imagination, intelligence, and ego, to be sure.) It takes a lot of self-control (something else I find in short supply) to not listen to that advice.

Some people refer to fiction writers as paid liars. Now, I have lied on occasion – I am not proud of it - but I have never been paid to do it. (Regardless of my amateur status, lying is still a despicable act- I’ve reduced mine to a respectable level. That doesn’t mean my reputation is fully recovered…) I have been able to rehabilitate myself to an extent, and make a sincere effort to keep my fiction on the page as it were. I am a work in progress (or is it that I’m a piece of work?)

I think the paid liar label is somewhat unfair – the art of fiction is built around imagining things as they aren’t and fabricating it so that others can see what you are imagining. There is an understanding – a covenant with the reader - that the content is not intended to be taken as real. We’re actually BUILDING A DIFFERENT REALITY.

A paid liar would be someone like Baghdad Bob ("There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!"), who deliberately stated known falsehoods in an attempt to pass them off as the truth (a plethora of recent Administration spokespersons also come to mind. “You can keep your doctor.” “It was a spontaneous protest.” “It was a couple of rogue IRS agents in Cincinnati.” “We lost the emails when the hard drives crashed.”)

Caution: Making things up can damage your reputation. Once you’ve lost trust, it doesn’t come back without A LOT OF EFFORT. Sometimes, it doesn’t come back at all.

Just saying….

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William Mangieri’s writing (including his latest ePublication “Broken Down: Detective Jimmy Delaney Collection #1”) can be found in many places, such as:

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