Am I In Your Book??

I've just told people who actually know me that I am a writer (because I am terrified of failure, so I waited forever and a day), and I've already had this question posed to me a couple of times--"Am I in your book?" I suppose people want to know if I am going to perform a character assassination on them?

So let me ease the mind of anyone who was wondering. I don't have characters based on people I know. They are complete and total products of my own overactive imagination. Whether the character be a friend, a parent, a cousin, a teacher, a love interest, anyone...they are all fiction.

There will probably be scenes based in reality. There were times in all of my manuscripts when I knew the kind of thing I wanted to happen, but I couldn't figure out exactly how I wanted it to happen. So most of the time, I went to the archives. My high school memories came out, and there may have been a specific place that was memorable to me that I thought would fit the story, or a particular event that took place that I knew was funny and just the kind of things happened that would move the story forward or put my characters in the type of situation I needed them in. So some of those things could be familiar to anyone who has known me for a long time.

When you are a writer, you are not only competing with the writers and books that are out there now. You're competing with the ones from the past. And believe me, just about every story has been written at some point. You have to find a way to make it yours, to make it unique, to twist it and do it in a way nobody else has done before. It is hard work, but the feeling of reading it back and knowing that I did that, I created that world and the people who live in it, is so rewarding and fills me with pride.

Until Next Time,

Ryann