Everyday Canvas

Untruths and Novel Reading

Prompt: Each person has a like or dislike when it comes to novels and some people will not bother reading certain kinds of novels. What do you think a novel should entail to make you read it?

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Some people take to certain genres for reading. Granted we all have our likes and dislikes, but I wouldn’t want to read a badly written novel in my favorite genre. On the other hand, I’d take a well-written one in any genre.

A well-written novel, for me, has to have fully developed characters and a good construction. Proper and relevant scene depiction, good use of the language, pace and fluidity are the other requirements. It would help if in some way the novel would talk to me; in other words, if it would make me empathize with the characters and situations in it. Yet, whether a novel does the latter or not, I’d still read it if it had the former basic requirements of what a good novel should have.

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Prompt: Sometimes parents, lovers, partners, and friends--knowingly or unknowingly--tell untruths about a person’s life. How would you handle such a false narrative of your life, if untrue stories and presumptions were said about you especially by someone close to you?

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The idea for this prompt came to me while waiting in line at the supermarket and eyeing the tabloids. Those VIPs, one has to feel for them with all the nasty untrue garbage thrown at their lives.

This has happened a lot to me, somewhat, be it in a positive way or a negative one. It started in childhood. Since I was the oldest of a certain group of cousins, anytime a mischief was discovered when we were together, I would be the one to be blamed, not that I was so innocent all the time either. In several of these instances, I wasn’t even there when stuff happened, and I was still blamed. Once I went shopping with an uncle unbeknownst to the other adults, and something happened at home with the other kids. When we came back, a couple of the adults got on my case. My uncle was so furious at them, it was unbelievable. He told them they were scapegoating me because I didn’t have a father and not looking at things squarely. I think that day my luck turned for the better.

Then I went into my teens and young adulthood. By this time, I had formed a good reputation in the family, one that I could do no wrong. They always assumed I received the highest grades, for example. I didn’t, at least not some of the time. Later on, someone started a rumor that I was engaged to a certain person. Nothing could be farther from the truth. That person was a friend of the family, and we didn’t go out together at all, not once. Gosh, we weren’t even alone in the same room. Several years later, I found out that this rumor was started by my mother's distant cousin who taught we would make a good couple. She said she did that, if it came to people's minds, it would happen. Go, figure what crazies can do! She was very wrong, anyhow. We would have made a very bad couple. Thank God, for my hubby, who entered my life in the middle of this hullabaloo in my silly family.

How did I handle all this? I did nothing. Things usually took care of themselves. I don’t know what people can do if they were to encounter a much worse untruth about them that involved the justice system. I wonder how many people are jailed or killed due to false imaginings. I believe in the truth, and I hope nobody ever assumes or makes up stuff about other people. If anyone wants to imagine anything, we do have fiction writing, don’t we?