If life were fiction, everything would make sense. You could write a first draft that sucked, and if you thought you couldn’t salvage a thing, you could just delete it. Then you would start another draft from scratch, but with the knowledge of the first draft in your mind. That way, all the mistakes and crooked turns would get ironed out, or only be included if they were to lead to a more satisfactory climax, and eventual ending. And if by chance (’cause that’s what writing does) it didn’t work out in the second draft, you could chuck that one out too. In fact, you could just keep on doing it until you got it right, like in Groundhog Day. And if life were fiction, you wouldn’t lose any time working these twists and turns out. You could be a virtual Methuselah and still be your fresh young self. The right age for the protagonist of your own life story.

In life, you don’t get to be the right age for the stage you stumble upon. Or for the person you fall in love with. We only learn by getting things wrong, but this learning can take years. Trial and error is a laborious process, and by the time you work it out, it might be too late. There is no answer. In life we are stuck in the first draft, good or bad as it might be, and we can’t unravel the narrative.

If life were fiction, order would reign supreme. In life, there are many loose ends, and dissatisfying outcomes. In fiction, all loose ends are tied up (or should be, if the writing is worth something), or at the very least, a network is provided where they make sense. Developments, even when unexpected, are to a degree predictable, or at least, fit in with the current of the story. They don’t spring upon us out of the blue. They fit in with a theme, or compliment other elements of the narrative. In short, everything is tidy and neat, even in the kind of fiction where awful things must happen to sustain the story. They may be awful, but at least they make sense.

In life, there are many moments that don’t make sense, and this is deeply dissatisfying. That is why real life wouldn’t work as fiction. Even faithfully true biographies must portray the kind of life that has some resemblance to the satisfying elements of fiction. Otherwise we would just throw the book against the wall.

If life were fiction, and you could keep writing new drafts because you didn’t like the old one, there would be some people who would never manage to write a draft they like. And so their fiction life would turn out to be no life at all.