It's interesting to see how easily people think they know their partner, lover, neighbour, the school mums, even their own parents or adult children, but sometimes things happen and you are just blown away by what happens.
I was talking to a man today about how he and his wife are splitting up after they discovered that they just grew apart - they had different interests, and weren't getting any mutual benefit from their marriage. They were being amicable and mature about it. He works in a good job, she a part time job while raising their two children, and he said to her that they should do things properly and get a lawyer each to divide things up and work out a parenting plan. His wife took his advice, and now the lawyer has insisted she go for everything, and she's turned into an evil money grabbing person who's trying to jeopardise his relationship, mainly with his daughter. It's like she is OK with him spending time with their son, but wants to make him out like he's an abuser with their daughter. Why wouldn't she be worried about both their children, not just one? He is being quite sensible about it, because he wants a proper father/child relationship with both his kids, and actually loves having them around and looking after them. He has a new respect for mothers who are always their for their kids as he's never had to do that side of the parenting before, but she just wants to ruin him, because the lawyer got in her ear. Why can things start off so mature and amicable then be totally destroyed by a hard-nosed legal practitioner? Obviously, the lawyer doesn't have the best interests of her client and their children at heart.
Then the next house I went to was owned by an elderly lady who had been in the same house for 61 years. When we were talking about how prime her location is, she jokingly mentioned that her home was close to the funeral home, so she didn't have far to go. We had a laugh, and I mentioned to her that she'd better check her rubbish bins, as last week there was a body found in one of the rubbish bins along the creek which was only a couple of hundred metres away from her. She hadn't heard about it, but didn't worry too much as she has her family members put things in the bin for her, so she would never go out and see if she did have a body in her bin. But it got me thinking...
As I am currently working on my third draft of my novel, and have decided to fictionalise aspects of it so not to be too direct in the events in my life, it's interesting how much of the real life stuff is so much better than the fiction I'm throwing in there. Some of the real life is a little self-absorbant, so I've changed real life conversations to reflect things that can make a fictional event happen, but the intensity of the real has so much more impact! I guess it can't be all intensity, it needs some light and shade, hence the fiction. But it also makes it easier making up conversations that happened in real life, than remembering things word for word, so the fiction does play two parts in the story... The other good thing about adding fiction to a story, is that people will always be questioning what is real and what is not, and only the people involved will truly know the real answer to that. I guess that's why all movies 'based' on real life, can't be historically correct and can annoy those either involved that their true story wasn't told, or when people feel like they are being victimised as the story wasn't the exact account that happened and feel like they are being punished by nosy readers, friends or family members who believe the truth in the whole story. Everyone always needs to remember that a story is generally only told in one point of view, it's how the main character feels about things and the journey of growth within that character, and if someone else wants to tell their side of the story, well they have the right to do so as well. Oooh, that could be a create concept of a series of books! Can you imagine, having the first book written in the protagonist's point of view, the second in the antagonist's point of view of the same events, then throw in additional books based on other characters within the story... can you imagine how different they would all be?
So as I felt some of the intense drama leaving my life, somehow it's come back with a vengeance... more fodder for more stories, because for some reason, 'boring' doesn't exist in my life, as for some reason my life is truly stranger than fiction!
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