Thoughts on Real

[valarltd]

I used the phrase "real writing" in a fan forum without thinking. When someone took umbrage, I totally missed the tone, mistook it for praise and cited my bibliography.
*headdesk*

Tonight, i'm in a discussion on the reality of God/gods/etc.

Real is a funny word.

All writing is real, in that it is a visible, tanglible object and the product of someone's thoughts.

Yet there are levels of real as well. There is real (paid) writing vs. hobby writing. There is real (what professional associations consider for membership) writing vs. paid, nonqualifying writing. There is real writing (hardback/mass market/print) vs. ebook writing.

Whe it comes to gods, there is the reality of "they're all real, that is someone believed in/created them."
Yet, some say there is only one real God, and all the others were either prep work or a falling away from the truth.
Or the reality of "this is the one I pray to" vs. "the one you pray to."
Or a god is real in the sense of actively working in a believer's life, vs. not working in a believer or a nonbeliever's.

All the gods have the same reality to me, which is to say, none at all. They are anthropomorfic personifications, like Prachett's Death, of the forces in the universe. They are metaphors we use to understand the Divine, conduits we use to access and influence the Matrix of Reality.
(yep, that word again)  They were created to explain the universe to humanity and many passed from common use when science took over a lot of that function.

There are people who have intense personal relationships with their god(s). I have enough trouble having relationships with real--er--tangible people.

Real.
Reality.
It's a bigger concept than I thought.

Comments

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

"Reality", like "Truth" is a malleable concept. And, like truth, it shifts according to the observer.

That makes 'reality' more like opinion than actual reality. (This also works where perceptions of 'truth' are concerned.)

:-)

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Reality is what we tell each other it is. --In the Mouth of Madness.

[thunderpigeon.livejournal.com]

There's a lot more going on here than whether you earn money. A good copywriting gig will earn me more in a week than I've earned from my first book since it was published. But if I talk to a colleague about my "real work," there's no question what I'm talking about. And I don't recall anyone being offended by it, ever.

If (and this seems unlikely to me) you said to someone, "Nice. Do you do any real writing?" then I can see why the person might be upset with you.

But if (as seems much more likely) you said something more like, "I have to go do some real writing now," or "I learned some tricks here that I also use in my real writing," then it seems to me that the other person doth protest too much.

Becasue s/he may have every right, on a fanfic forum, to expect not to be judged for not doing "real" writing, but (the way I see it, at least) s/he doesn't have any business taking you to task for what you consider "real" when you do it. Because there are a couple of other things that aren't in your list of what constitutes real. One is that *your* real writing is the writing that matters to you. The other, once money and publishing are in the picture, is that *your* real writing is the work to which you own the rights.