What does saying you are “writing in the moment” mean? Sometimes, it means that what you are writing about is something you can observe happening around you at the very moment you are writing. This makes it easier to capture details like a slow-motion camera’s input gives focus, and the writing is true to life and a reflection of the “here and now.”

In addition to your particular moment, a moment in time for the characters in the plot can be captured.

“In good writing, words become one with things.”

What is happening around you right now involves many things, and a choice as to what to include and not include has to be made. Some events stand out in the moment, and you can sense them, almost breathing them in, and then using the reasons to direct your thoughts at the details, you capture what the moment can be about.

A life story can be a series of chosen references to past moments. As you tell or write the story, you choose the particular moments and interpret them differently than when they happened. Seldom do you hear a person tell their own life story the same way each time they tell it unless they are reading it because, in a different moment, more experiences filter the memories and conclusions?

The conclusions we draw from past events and in those cases where those events strongly influence our self-image, then re-looking at events can change parts or all of our self-image and lead to reinventing our self-image. You can write at the moment when the subject of your story is happening, or you can reach back for specific moments, but those moments change each time you reach back for them.

Fiction brings the reader experiences that they would have never expected to have. Instead, we step into a new reality (both the reader and author can feel they are there in the moment) where all our beliefs can be set aside, and we meet new people who can inspire or terrify us.

Will these fictional characters and experiences influence your self-identity? I think they will. Do they play a role in the narrative of how you see your life story? Again, they do. Does fiction have any redeeming value? Will its influence raise or lower our intelligence? There is plenty of evidence that it increases it.

You can talk to them about various subjects and new ideas, and different perspectives can be found. It sounds like opening a book of fiction.

The first time I read William Faulkner’s fictional story, As I Lay Dying, it took me by surprise. I expected to enter a unique storyline and learn about the people in Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, during the 1920s. Yet the conversation's language, tone, and sound were a surprise. How the characters interacted and spoke to each other differed from anything I expected, and I knew I was in a different place seeing life differently.

Einstein suggested, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

Neil Gaiman is a writer of fantasy and fiction, and in his book The View from the Cheap Seats, he wrote about attending a meeting for fiction writers in China. In previous years, China didn’t allow fairy tales and fiction in their schools, so he was surprised to learn of this invitation. He asked an official what had changed and was told, off the record, that they had toured all the big companies they did outsourcing work for in the United States and asked those they met what they read. The resounding answer was science fiction. The officials then began to understand the connection of invention with creativity. (I guess it took a random event for them to figure this out.)

There are good and bad guys in fiction, fairy tales, and horror stories. For some, the “Force” in Star Wars might represent the goodness in the universe, but what about that goodness? Will it reaffirm our beliefs while seeing our beliefs as an element of a fictional plot; does it make the fiction more believable? The bigger question is, can we really step out of our world, or are we just going always to view things through the lens of our experience?