Day 83

The story is never about you

…

Well, sometimes it is.

Why?

In the beginning, we tend to write ourselves into the stories we write, and also, the various other characters are a collection of traits of people we have known in the past and present.

The trick is with those other people not to make them too much like their real-life counterparts, or you may spend the rest of your life in litigation.

I know there are parts of me in my characters because people I know who have read my stories tell me how much they are like me. The problem with that is I didn’t realise I was doing it.

But, to emphasise, the story is not about you.

Unless it is an autobiography.

I have thought about it, writing the story of my life, but it’s so boring, the best use of my book would be to read it just before going to bed.

What is probably more interesting would be the story of my family, traced back to the mid-1700s, and they are a very interesting bunch. To me, it seems that people who lived a hundred years ago had far more interesting lives than we do these days.