For the tremulous, this is a topic SUGGESTED by my novel, but not really ABOUT it. I’m as tired of posting about it as y’all must be of reading my posts.
Anywhistle…
I got the manuscript back a little while ago with notes from the agent to whom I submitted it. Working on her suggestions involved doing a complete rewrite of three chapters inclusive, and because I find it hard to proofread what I myself write, I had a advertorial writer friend of mine go over it for me after I finished that bit. My friend, after handing me back the redinked pages, said that she’d had a little difficulty figuring out which of the characters in the book was meant to be me. Of the two protagonists, the teenage boy is quite unlike me at that age (being athletic and popular but not at all bookish), while his best friend shares my love of books but lacks my genitalia. I replied that neither of them was meant to be me; I don’t generally put myself in stories I write consciously, and tend to edit myself out if I find myself there by accident.
Anywhistle, this makes me wonder: writers of fiction, how much of your work is autobiographical? Do you find yourself writing thinly-veiled accounts of your own life, or place yourself in fantasy landscapes? Or do you consciously edit yourself out?
Upon reading my manuscripts, my friends have told me that my characters start out very distinctive, but revert to talking like me. When I review the 'scripts in question, sure enough, my form of rhetoric and reasoning comes out. I’m what we like to call a high Mary Sue risk author.
I’m just curious, but did the agent read the full manuscript and respond already? I thought you were still in the middle of writing your book; I didn’t realize you were done already.
Not much at all. She’s short and has brown eyes like me. That’s about it.
My protagonist is just like me except that she’s richer, cuter, skinnier, younger, drives a nicer car, thinks up witty come-backs on the spot instead of five years later, and triumphs in the end.
I find your friend’s question odd. None of the characters is “supposed” to be you. No one is supposed to be able to point to a character and say, “Yup, that’s Skald.” In fact, it’s pretty widely regarded as poor writing to have characters that are identifiably you. Of course they’re going to share some similarities with you, because hey, you’re giving them their thoughts, but it’s fiction, not autobiography.
On the other hand, it’s amusing as hell to write yourself into a story like I did for a couple fan fic challenges. (I wouldn’t base a character on me in my serious writing, of course). Shannon Phile is a lot like me, except the real me has never married, had a child, owned a weiner dog or actually been harried by Mulder and Scully. It’s strictly for self-amusement, however, not something I recommend doing in a work you ever hope to publish.
I’ve finished a draft some time ago and submitted it to an friend of mine, formerly an editor, whose now an agent and who has been bugging me to get off my ass. It was either that or listen to her mock me for the rest of my life.
If you have an agent requesting your stuff and you’re not finishing it up, you deserve to be lashed with a sock full of marshmallows, not mocked. Stale marshmallows.
(I just finished rewriting the last 1/3 of my book today, based on an agent’s suggestions. I’m going to read it once through tomorrow, then send it back to her. Hopefully it’ll land me representation.)
Neither, really. (I neither write veiled autobiography nor go to effort to remove myself from my work.)
It’s a popular trope in some people’s minds that people can only write about themselves – some people took “Write what you know” far too damn literally. (I prefer the phrasing “Know what you write”.) And some people just don’t really understand the concept of fiction. Most writers I know (and I do know a fair number, as I spend some time in a professional gathering spot on the 'net) find this annoying and ignorant.
My characters are themselves, not bits and pieces of me, scrambled. At the same time, I agree with Andrea Dworkin about one thing – a writer will cannibalise everything around them, pull it in as raw material, and output it as story. (I suspect this is the nature of creative work, the breaking down and resynthesis.) Not just one’s own life, but everyone around one – their stories, their bits and pieces, their overheard conversations, they all go into the big mental compost heap that fertilises Art.
Or something like that, only less, y’know, pretentious-sounding.
I don’t know what you mean. It’s finished…at least, I had finished a draft I was comfortable giving her, and she gave me her critique, and I’m working on that two hours a day.
Sorry, my post was totally unclear. I meant that you deserved to be mocked (or lashed with a marshmallow-filled sock) if you had not given her your book.
Occasionally, I write a character like me, but usually they are quite different. My reaction in various situations would be nothing like my characters, and would make a lousy story.
