In volume 12 of Fullmetal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa says “Fiction brings salvation to characters in stories that would otherwise have no salvation at all.”  Real life is nothing like stories, and I can tell you, I’ve had quite a storybook relationship.  I met my now husband when I was 15 years old in high school, we started dating at 16, and have been together now going on 11 years.  I love my husband, but unlike in stories, love is never enough to keep two people together.  You also have to have friendship, patience, understanding, forgiveness, and sheer determination to take you through bad times.  

Perhaps I’m just showing my age, but I’ve found myself losing patience with stories written by authors that seem to have no understanding of the emotional depths of love.  I hope to be able to turn my breadth of knowledge on life and love into a meaningful statement for Gaara and Sakura.  If you ask me, What am I trying to say with my story? I think the answer might be something akin to “What makes two people to fall in love?”  Followed closely by “What keeps two people together besides love?”

In real life there’s no one to save you at the last minute, no one to magically sweep in and fix your problem, no one who will understand you more perfectly than you do yourself.  Real life is gritty, dirty, ugly, and brutal.  In real life failure is entirely possible, your dreams may never in fact come true, and even though you may have been taught in school that you can do anything you set your mind to, you actually can’t.  

That’s what real life is, but that’s also why I find Naruto so inspiring.  The characters inspire me to be a better person, because real life has also taught me that you never know if you’re going to fail until you try.  That sometimes, rarely, you really can understand someone else so perfectly it’s like you’re looking right into their soul.  That life has beautiful, tender, warm, compassionate moments, waiting for you to find them.  That there exists a love so great that it would give anything for the happiness of the other.  

Many kind people have commented on the fact that my story is so realistic, and I want to thank you all for that.  I don’t really think so, but if it seems that way then I am succeeding so far.  It’s probably just because I’m a decade older than most writers of fanfiction.  Things will probably only get more realistic (read: brutal, sad, etc) as we go along, but… the top of the mountain looks twice as high when viewed from the lowest valley.  As I think about the moments I want to explore in Gaara and Sakura’s lives I realize that it might take me years to write this story.  At an average of a week per chapter, if you take a closer look at the aforementioned analogy, that just might be me standing at the bottom of the valley, looking up at the mountain of words and chapters to come in the future… 

I really did start writing this story with no intention of looking for even one comment.  I would still keep writing new chapters even with no comments at all, because my motivation to write this story is not connected to my ego in that manner.  (Like I said before, I hate it when authors say they won’t write more until they get X number of reviews.  I mean, do they really need their ego stroked that much to resort to extortion?) 

To be honest I find comments at once euphoric and terrifying.  Terrifying because now someone expects something of me, and I can only try and write better to meet that expectation.  Euphoric because, for a reason I can’t quite identify yet, once I post a chapter I await the email notices saying a review has been submitted much the same way my dog sits at my heel waiting for table scraps – hungrily, greedily, delighted when one comes my way.

I’ll try to keep my update schedule to an average of a week per chapter.  Truthfully, I was trying to match Kudo and post my next chapter either right before or after hers, but the girl writes like some kind of muse has possessed her soul, and my more earthly non-possessed soul just can’t keep up. :D  C’est la vie!

Current Mood: thoughtful
Tags: amoc, life ramblings, story premise

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