wannabe fictionist

i've always kinda envied fictionists -- especially novelists -- because it seems to me that so much about life that is actually worth saying, cannot be said in anything except story. Poetry is such a paltry little thing in comparison, good for meditations on beauty and nature and love and the inner state of things, but almost useless for the things that really matter, the choices we make, the twists and turns that life takes, the roads we choose and why, the roads we don't choose, and why. Creative nonfiction may be a close substitute, but its fact-bounded-ness is both a strength and also a terrible weakness: "you can't make this shit up", as they say, but that also puts limits on what can and cannot be written insofar as one wants to remain a decent human being who cares about the people one writes about.
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So yes, i envy the freedom that fictionists enjoy. So often these days, when i talk with friends or listen in on conversations going on around me (okok, i confess, i enjoy eavesdropping ... ), i find myself with so many things i want to say, observations i want to make, insights (do i kid myself?) i want to share -- but none of these will fit into the genres i'm actually good at writing. What i want to say, can only be said in fiction, because it is about life, in all of its wide expanse.
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In other news. Since i cannot put this in a novel. Can i just say. Life moves on, and time moves on. i've learnt over the years that life, like music, has a long line, an arc; i'm learning not to second-guess where that arc will land. i'm grateful for reconciliations, for relationships with friends and loved ones that have been healed against all expectations. There is something miraculous in all of this, i think, something for which the heart wants to give thanks in quiet song.
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