{ 35 } Art Imitating Life or You're So Vain

First, the writing is coming along. Not as fast or as furious as I wanted it to, but that's they way these things go. Plus, it doesn't help when there are two very different story with two very different sets of characters trying to fight their way out of you.

Sigh.

As I'm writing, my thoughts will often turn to you, my dear reader. Not the anonymous ones, but the people that I know personally and have read my stuff in the past and will, hopefully, read my stuff in the future.

If you were to ask me where my ideas come from, there's only one obvious answer: nowhere. Really. As I stated in Post { 31 } I Suck at Life, it's all about the Magical Sentence popping in to my head to get the process started. Then things fall in to place.

However, even though I might suck at life, I don't live in a vacuum (HA!), so often friends and acquaintances make their way in to my writing. It's the curse of knowing a writer.

When you read things, you might think to yourself, "Holy crap! That's me! She wrote me in to a story!" Then you'll be either happy or furious, depending on the character and how you think I interpreted you.

Well, hate to break it to you, but you're only half right.

To date, the only things I have written that were actually about someone in particular are the two obvious examples: "Billy" and "Sam." I don't think it gets much more obvious than that.

But the rest of the time, characters and conversations and situations are an amalgamation of all sorts of different crap, some of it real, some of it not. That's why you might think, "Huh. She wrote about my love of vintage Converse High Tops and the time I burned off my eyebrows lighting a cigarette on the stove, so I know it's me, but why did she say I'm a pig farmer in Vermont? Everyone knows I'm a federal judge!"

Because it's not you, silly. I obviously borrowed what I needed and dropped the rest. When I'm ready to write your biography, I'll let you know. (FYI: I don't know anyone that fits any of that description. I wish I did.)

Having said that, my writings aren't autobiographical either. I do have a habit of writing females whose names begin with "B," but that's about it. Yes, somethings are real (I actually did work for a perpetually hungover manager that would send me texts meant for his girlfriend and get mad at me for no reason), but again, the biggest relation I have to my characters is that they came out of my brain.

I suppose I really don't need to explain all of this to you, with you being the smart people I know you are. But my brain gets all stupid and panicky about this sort of thing. I guess that's the curse of being a writer that knows people.