Writing Pieces of Yourself

Something I've always found funny and fascinating is the variety of assumptions readers make about an author's personal life, personality, and history based on the books they write. I myself tend not to care. Fiction is fiction, and I like to maintain that screen of privacy. My interest in an author starts and ends with his or her way with words.

I don't ever mind fielding questions from my own readers, though, and sometimes get a good chuckle over what they think I'm like based on my characters. Most often, I'm asked about my Dartmoor crew; about which character I've modeled after myself. I've even had Emmie called a "self-insert." Well, Emmie does ride horses, and Ava and Sam are writers. But I have a confession to make: personality-wise, I'm most like Ghost. 

I don't know if anyone who knows me well in real life would agree with that answer, but as far as my own self-assessment goes, he's more or less my avatar in the world of Dartmoor. 

I'm a generally unpleasant person: grouchy, suspicious, impatient. I curse faaaaaar more than I should, and the moment I have a passing thought that I should try to sound more ladylike, I'm cursing again. I don't usually realize I'm doing it; I grew up on a horse farm and it's more or less punctuation at this point. Why use a comma when you can use a nice, juicy expletive instead? I'm unromantic, cynical, and pessimistic. 

But I'm not just like him. I'm polite when I need to be, and I'm neither a man nor the president of a motorcycle club. But I'll certainly never be the heroine of a romance novel. I could pull off sarcastic sidekick, maybe. That's a role for me. But never that of the soft and sweet, wide-eyed, wondrous leading lady. My "Good Lord, what now?" view of the world is much more Ghost-like. 

Ghost's POV has been indispensable while writing Lord Have Mercy. Let's face it, this book is bonkers, and it helps, every couple of chapters or so, to use him as the lens to view it through. 

To some extent, I think fiction writers fold little pieces of themselves - even the tiniest slivers and glass fragments - into all of our characters. After all, everything they've all ever said has come out of my brain and been typed by my fingers. But, over time, as you write, you learn where to fold the ugly parts of yourself, how to wrap them up so they're more acceptable to the audience. For instance, early on in my publishing career, I wrote a book called Made For Breaking, and across the board, readers hated Lisa Russell. There was far too much me in her, and those are traits, as stated above, for sarcastic sidekicks, not leading ladies. After that, I changed tack, and now, I wind up putting most of myself into my male characters. I think that's the main reason I've come to enjoy writing M/M so much over the past few years. It's easier to be vulnerable, to write about love, without worrying if the woman I've written is an acceptable one...or if she's too much like me. Lawson, most recently, wasn't me, but there was a fair amount of my brain inside of his, and it felt nice to expunge it on the page that way. Now, I model the women in my books on women I know and admire, whether real-life or fictional. Even so, there's no guarantee they'll be seen as "likeable." 

I suppose, if pressed, I'd say I try not to write admirable or likeable characters, but endearing ones. Man or woman, with each of them, I want to draw those fine lines around their eyes, and those nasty little smirks, and those annoyed eye rolls in a way that reaches straight out to the readers and reminds them of someone they know in real life. 

You might not love them, might not even like them, but you know them. That has been the greatest and best challenge of writing fiction.