Killing my old friend.

There is always truth in fiction. Like a child, containing his parents' DNA but still being an entirely different person, a story contains the author's experiences in some way while still taking on a life of its own.

I'm not particularly good at telling stories. I've got friends that are, and I envy them their seemingly natural gift of recounting events so they become meaningful to others. Maybe it's the process of synthesis that I've just never really understood. Out of the synthesis - that combining of other things to make a whole - of our memories and daily lives, in good and bad, come great stories; in theory, I have enough stored away up in my head from childhood alone to get me through at least three or four decent-sized novels. However, when moving those onto the paper, the emotional pull of those things seems to get lost in translation. It's been this way for quite some time.

Perfectionism and I are old friends. We've got this working relationship down pretty well: as long as I continue to completely overthink and agonize over every bit of output, constantly comparing my work with others' so as to avoid any possible real originality, we get along fine. Watch out, though, should I overstep those bounds; he's an angry drunk. You can even see it in my cooking style: I love the power of a recipe, and follow it with religious fervor. Don't you dare take it out of my hands. It's hard for me to synthesize anything of my own, but at least I do a good job picking other peoples' recipes, right?

This perfectionism I have carried with me everywhere for so long colors everything I do, like a bad pair of tinted glasses where it's impossible to know what things actually look like. Others can tell you about the world outside the glasses, and you can get the general idea, but with everything still being shaded you can't truly experience it the way they see it. This series of posts, I think, is the first step in snapping those glasses clean in half.