You're writing fiction. So why does it feel like lying?

When I was 19, I started writing a novel. I finished it at the age of 22. It was a 1,400-page novel. High fantasy. Exquisite concepts. Original world building. I had learned so much about the craft of writing and I put all of it into practice. The result? My first novel was dogshit. Back then I didn't have the maturity to understand why it didn't work. I sent it to every publishing house in the country and to some across the world and received so many rejections. I was so hurt and couldn't understand why people were shitting on my novel using exotic adjectives. (What ever happened to sending in a canned response for rejections.) And then, from ages 22 to 34, I wrote the first 5 or 10 chapters of many different novels each year. I couldn't finish any of them because they didn’t feel real. Something wasn't working. I had great world-building and original ideas, but every time I wrote the first 5 or 10 chapters, the characters didn't feel fully alive and plausible. They didn't feel real…