I’d Like to Thank … My Muse

My brother-in-law gave me a mug that reads, “Please do not annoy the writer. She may put you in a book and kill you.”

I found that hilarious – and a perfect gift for a tea-drinking writer when I received it.

People who don’t write assume – from my experience – that writers use people they know as their characters, as if they couldn’t create characters on their own.

I’ve had people tell me – usually during an argument – “I don’t want to be a character in one of your novels!” To which I reply, “You wish!”

This is not some conceited retort. I think, at least to some degree, the people who say things like that do fancy themselves as the perfect “character” for someone’s novel. And there are writers who fancy themselves characters for their own stories.

Those of us of a certain age are familiar with Alfred Hitchcock making a cameo in every one of his films. And if he weren’t a screenwriter, Woody Allen wouldn’t have an acting career. Don’t believe me? Name one movie he was in that he didn’t write.

But seriously, I don’t use real people to play the part of my characters, and never have – even when I was 10 and made my first aborted stab at The Great American Novel.

My inspiration consists more of taking a line from a conversation. For example, a recent blog was inspired by something a friend wrote me in an email.

Another example comes from one of my novels, where one of the main characters’ father dies. The whole aftermath at the hospital is a recreation of what happened when my own father died – and that was only a year earlier, so it was still fresh.

Everything the wife did and said was what I remember my mother doing and saying. Yet the wife, a very minor character in the series, is otherwise nothing like my own mother. I only used that particular scene.

I also find it amusing that people who have read my novels will say, “Oh, so-and-so is you.” And they’re usually wrong. Yes, I am a character in nearly every one of my novels.

 But before you start thinking I’m a complete narcissist, let me clarify. My books are not autobiographical. I never set out to write a book about me, and so far I’ve succeeded.

One character in each book is who I wish I were instead of me.

And it’s never the character people think. (Okay, maybe in the first Unicorn story it is.) It’s always the first left-handed character you meet.

I am essentially a watcher. I observe the human condition, and apply it to my stories.

This is not unique. This is what writers do. Yet you never hear a writer receiving an award say, “I’d like to thank my muse, so-and-so, for giving me the line that inspired this film.” No, they thank the academy, their parents for sending them to a good university, their wives, partners and kids for giving them the space to create.

Yet it doesn’t all come from them. Someone sparked the idea. Anyone could be that muse. Writers just don’t usually talk about it.

Now a word of warning to all of you non-writers out there: Lest you think of making some grandiose speech you think I’ll include in my next novel, forget about it. The thing I find particularly inspiring is usually something insignificant that you say when you’re not particularly paying attention.

Besides, the wrong thing could annoy me, and I might put you in the next story and kill you.