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She, Not Me!
If you've ever shared one of your stories with a non-writer you've probably heard this before. “Oh, is that about you?” Those who bother to ask usually mean well enough, but this is honestly one of the most annoying questions I have received as a writer. Worse is when the person who asked the question won't believe my answer.
Dear lord people, there is more to a story than real life—hence the term “story” and not “memoir”, or “journal”, or “article”! Believe it or not, it is possible to write about characters other than oneself.
Last year I spent a lot of time working on a realistic fiction story about a girl who is forced change schools in 8th grade and the challenges she faces with bullying in her new environment. Perhaps I should have changed it a bit more before I let a few of my classmates read it. As an 8th grader in a new school, I spent the next few days listing to exclamations of “I get it, it's about you!” and receiving knowing looks whenever I tried to explain the differences between me and my main character; starting with the fact that I do not keep bees nor do I have a beloved pet tarantula. And even if I did have a pet spider—though I'd really prefer a snake—I would never name it “Gracie”.
So yeah, there's my rant, but I don't believe for a second that this rant doesn't belong to every other writer to. I wish every non-writer I know could read this and understand where I'm coming from, but the only ones who even begin to get it are the other kinds of artists who have faced this problem with their own medium. And the really ironic thing is that I'm posting this in a place where chances are no non-writer will ever read it. Go figure.
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I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. <br /> - Maya Angelou <br /> When i was little/I used to point a chubby finger toward the dark sky/And ask my father/why some stars moved and others didn’t/He would laugh and explain that some were airplanes/I still wish on them today ~ Laugh-It-Out<br /> The feathers of a crow are black/The ink of my pen is blacker/The pain of my heart is blackest~ Mckay<br /> If love produced a blossom/I’d take it in my palm/What a blessing, the bright color!/How soothing, such a balm!/I’d keep a petal for my own/The rest, drop from my hands/For such a flower would multiply/And populate the lands~ thesilentraven<br /> And I began to rival legends/Long entombed before my birth./But for all my much envied fame/The lust for more would not abate./The plaques and prizes with my name/Will, like all things, disintegrate. ~ TheEpic95 now known as Helena_Noel