Question for the Writers

[Phoebe]

I have two crazy novels that play out in my mind and somehow need to be written. In part they're already written but not a complete draft. The problem is not only lack of time, which is major, but also that I feel so much is drawn into them from real life experiences (the whole "write what you know" thing) that I feel it would be some kind of monstrous ethical violation to write these things as fiction and put out into the world where others could see them. Like, there is no way my parents or neighbor on one side wouldn't identify themselves as the characters in these books, but I swear there is NO connection - it's just that when a person experiences X and X comes up obviously in a story, you can't help make that connection. It's impossible to separate it all out. Many of you here are writers and I wonder how you do this, where relevant. How do you explain to loved ones or distant acquaintances that these are NOT, in fact, characters or experiences connected to them?

[bralbovsky]

Write under an alias. Nom de plume if you must.
Seriously, the first question anyone close to you will secretly, silently have is "am I in it?"
Even when you say "No, it's fiction. I wouldn't do that..." They will pore over the pages looking for things they might have said or thoughts they might have had.
When you uncover the time, write the story you need to write. It's the only way you'll sleep at night.

[Phoebe]

This is not a bad idea. I could come up with a fake name. Heh. I have a good story but there is no way people would fail to think it's true to life, because people would think I am writing about my neighbor, my parents, my husband, etc. and it's totally not that.

[Kyle]

My advice is to write it, and when people ask you, you just explain it. I made each of my kids into characters in my books with the good stuff and the bad. As long as it's fair, I don't think it should be a problem. You can write under a pen name- but that's not going to solve anything because eventually they'll find out you wrote a book.

I know that my hesitation wasn't about those people being mad at me, but the vulnerability you feel writing about something so real. But that's what makes it better.

I should also add- some people can't see the forest for the trees. I wrote things that were OBVIOUSLY about someone and they were oblivious.

Also- I'm not sure you'd be comfortable writing under a fake name. Have you done that before?

[Mike]

It's part of my nature to be oblivious. I assume you wrote that into the character as well. If so, it didn't register with me.

[Kyle]

Dude. You were Abbie. I know you saw it.

[Phoebe]

I think everyone sees that. You're right that it simply needs to be done, and if people ask, it can be explained. After all, the wife in the story smokes, and so there's an obvious fallback explanation that if I'm not this smoking woman, then the husband is not my husband, others are not my neighbors or parents, and so on. I told the husband the plot and he was actually intrigued enough to hear me out the whole 5 minutes, so that's a good sign. That sounds kind of bad when I write it out but the reality is that I jibber jabber to him the whole day long just like you'd expect, so I don't normally expect him or anyone to listen.

[Zen]

At one point when I was with my daughter and her friends at her boarding school, I came to the realization that the section I had just finished, which was a flashback section with a "new" character in book two (not really new but new in terms of being one of the primary characters) It involved that character and the main female character when they were in their early teens, which was right around the age my daughter was at the time... Anyway... I realized that this character "speaks" with my daughter's voice... It was totally unintentional. The way she phrases things... the words she uses... the level of sarcasm... everything... The fact that this particular character became one of my favorites in my own story may or may not be influenced by this...

[Phoebe]

Hoping I've resolved this in such a way that nobody will think it's about them. Or at least they'll think it's a mixed-up jumble of parts that makes no real sense in real life. Super excited about this and wish I could spend more time on it.