Sunday, September 5, 2010

A Great Perhaps

John Green wrote about the idea of the Great Perhaps. I don't think I fully understand that as anything other than something very big that might happen if you take certain actions. So I went looking for a Great Perhaps.

It centres around a book. I wrote this as a novella. It has since taken a mind of its own and had be come up with lots of extra plot - a second half. It is now a Work in Progress for the second time in its life, on its way to becoming a novel. It has, at the moment, seventeen chapters, each one a definition of love. It has three protagonists, each of them unique in their approach towards the world.

It has truths, lies and secrets, sometimes all three at the same time. It has false names and false lies, twisted motives and subtle movements. It is love, itself. And I've just done something with the first half of it that I cannot go back on. Sick of promises, sick of silence, I took action. In the last words of François Rabelais, “I go to seek the great perhaps.”

My promise was to keep this book locked away. However, as a promise to me by this person was broken, I feel I can get away with this. This is a book, if nothing else. If there is no longer any deeper meaning to this story, it is still a story. One cannot hide stories when they consume all things in the end.

The same John Green said, "For me at least, fiction is the only way I can twist my lying memories into something true." I have a great memory, I once told That Guy I Am, it's just the recollection bit I have a problem with. So when I write fiction I too extract these segments of the past and turn them into something I can believe in. Every story is true, even if it isn't factual.


Now that I have taken action, there is but one thing to do: await consequences. This, I think, is a Great Perhaps.

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