by Jennifer Goodwin Haigler

Created on: July 28, 2009

My Life in Fiction

When I was a kid I wasn't really encouraged to be creative. A total disregard for fit or form only taught to focus on function. I had dreams though of who I could be and what I could do. An imagination kept to ones self is not something easily taken away. So I kept it up; this gift of imagination.

I always felt sort of left out by my family. My parents were divorced. My mother remarried and my father with a girlfriend (the witch). So as I was all alone in my thoughts making things up was a way to escape, a way to feel as though anything was possible. No, I wasn't one of those girls wishing for a fairy godmother to take her away or waiting for Prince Charming to beckon me from my bedroom window. Of course the characters weren't me per se but people I wanted or thought I could be. Fiction was my non-fiction so to speak. I could be who I wanted to be, despite their thoughts or opinions, in the stories I would make up. I dared to dream there was another world and there was. My characters a different version of me: girls or women with strong personalities and unbreakable self-esteem, living in different places, doing different jobs, even loving other women as opposed to men. I have never really considered myself one to do what people think I should do anyway. In fact I will usually go the opposite way just to prove people wrong.

Some people believe fiction is a waste of time and choose to only read non-fiction. Non-fiction definitely has its place for me as well however loosing myself in a story of what could be is wonderfully exciting, exceptionally juicy and whether it is a fabulous fiction novel I am reading or the latest fiction endeavor under my pen I am kept awake well past the night and into the wee hours of the morning imagining.

It is the times that when I am writing my own fiction, times I'm losing myself, times I'm finding another version of myself or those around me that excite me the most. Writing fiction has always felt like a true calling to me. With fiction anything you dream can be possible for you and hopefully for your readers. Helping them to find themselves or some version of themselves they might like to be at the time is a gift, a gift I want to possess, a gift I'd like to pass on, a gift I love to give.

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