Today is the day to get your finger out of your nose, at least halfway

Oh my! Today Zulkey.com goes multimedia. The hit song, "The Claire Zulkey Funk Manifesto in C" can now be heard online! Make sure your sound is on as you enjoy the hot sounds of Irritable Colon. Also, you can read the lyrics here. Irritable Colon is the wave of the future, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

Ok, so I have been looking over my ongoing serial over the last few weeks, and realize that it is not the neatest, tightest piece of fiction in the world. Tenses change. Words are misspelled. For some reason, the character Meredith's husband is introduced as "Rick" but then I later call him "Bob." Which of these names he'll end up with, we'll see. Anyway, I hope that you will take this all with a grain of salt and forgive me. This is a purely fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants operation here.

Now, on a small writing discussion. A small debate was raised to me yesterday about how much of what writers, or, at least me specifically, create, is true. What is real, what happened, what is based on something that actually ocurred or somebody we actually know?

The official answer: None of it. We're writers, we make this shit up.

The unofficial answer: All of it. It's all real. What do you think we are, magicians that can just conjure things up out of thin air? I don't think so, buddy.

But it's not as simple as that. Most writers (and again, here I am talking about me), don't read directly from their journal and copy it on a page. I think that most stories start from a grain of truth and then evolve into fiction. The most fictiony fiction evolves from a real flight of fancy, so that you can say, "Well, this was based on an idea that I had," but that idea was real, something thought over and pondered before set on a page.

But a lot of times certain truths are culled. Not the whole thing, but pieces. For instance, my Haypenny story was based on a very painful bikini wax I endured. But I did not lose my soul, I do not have a waxer named Olga, and I certainly don't tip 17%. "Late Summer Ride" on Whetmag was based on real events, as was "Strangers on a Train," in Pindeldyboz. But these things were fiction, otherwise. I am working on a story that is based on a real night out with a real friend of mine and the story takes place in her real apartment, but the characters are fake, and so is the plot, thank god.

The tricky thing is when real emotions are put into a fictional story. The love you have for your girlfriend, the bitterness you feel towards a successful coworker, the affection you have for a dog, these can all be borrowed and put into a story. But how do you explain, then, that this is still fiction? People you know recognize these emotions and assume that you are writing about real persons, places, or things.

I think that you can make up persons, places, things and plot, but you can't necessarily invent an emotion. How do you know unless you've felt it? You can't, I don't think, so you take the familiar (the emotion) and add it to the unfamiliar (the fiction) and there you go. It's understandable to the author and reader but it's still a made-up piece of work.

Reality and fiction are like a good Italian salad dressing. To the writer, the chef, the oil and vinegar and all the other ingredients are obviously separate and are a thing of beauty when mixed together. But when consumed by the diner, or reader, they're delicious, but the ingredients are hard to discern.

This is undoubtedly the worst simile I've ever come up with.

Anyway, the point is this. Just because some element of a piece of fiction is real does not mean that the whole thing is real. Just because I write a story about your new pair of Converse Hi-Tops and my revulsion for them does not mean that I have revulsion for you. You very well aren't even in the story. Readers, especially readers who know their authors: try not to worry. Most writers want people and their loved ones to read their work, and thus would not spend their time grinding their axes on the page just to piss everybody off and work out their own issues. That's what journals are for. So just enjoy the salad and try not to dribble the dressing on your tie. We chefs in the kitchen, meanwhile, will try not to cut our fingers off.

I promise I'll never make a bad simile worse like that again.

Oh, and if you've read this far, I'd like to put in a misplaced plug for tomorrow's interview. You've waited a long time fore it. Now you'll get it, and get it good.