It’s Not You (In My Story), It’s Me
Sometimes someone I know will read something I’ve written and ask me if so-and-so (in my book, my script, my narrative haiku, whatever) is so-and-so that we know in real life.
This irks me, though I pretend it doesn’t. The fact that my reader/friend’s first comment is to try to connect one of my rich finely-drawn characters sprung from my brilliant writerly mind with some mouth-breather in our real life always feels vaguely accusatory. Like I plagiarized from life and got caught. But what I find most irksome is that they’re now patting themselves on the back for their eagle eye instead of what they should be doing which is complimenting me on how brilliant my book is, how rich my script is going to make me, how tight my haiku is.
But nothing’s worse than a desperate writer so I patiently regurgitate some MFA patter that all the characters are amalgams of real people and imaginary ones. Plus, all my characters are me and I’m them, blah, blah. Even the neighbor garroting his wife to death in the window. Even the Trinidadian dog walker with endometriosis. Even the… you get it. All one hundred percent moi.
This is clearly an unsatisfactory answer to the reader/friend and is followed by an awkward silence as the reader/friend wonders why they wasted their time reading this anyway. I’m usually trying to remember why I’m friends with this person.
Then I break first and admit that in this one rare instance I did base a character on someone from real life… them. They brighten. And I know that they’ll never figure out exactly who it is (because it usually isn’t remotely true), but at least they’ll keep reading my stuff.
