Get Out of My Fantasies!

No, not really. I write them to share them, but I find it odd when people assume that since I write erotica it must mean something specific.

What I often get is someone assumes that he or she is in that fantasy that I have. But that would mean that every single story I write is a fantasy of mine. And that I only fantasize about people I know. Or possibly that I have attempted every single thing I've written about...

Whoa. Just stop right there. I can't even continue on that line of thought any longer.

I write stories. They are fiction. The people held within them are also fiction. There is a disclaimer on many fiction books that proclaims all events and characters are made up. The beauty of making everything up is that there are no restrictions to where they can go. A piece of writing advice passed around so many is "Write what you know." While that is fine, there is also a point where you have to change things or be forever paralyzed by what someone else, a real person, would actually do. That doesn't work in fiction, because the rules require a fiction story to make sense, to have a point, to come to a conclusion and not simply fizzle into oblivion.

Sometimes, pieces of a person I know or something that really happened might spark an idea to create a character or to shape an event or to twist a plot. Those pieces are harder for me, because it takes me a long time when I rewrite them to make them fictional rather than representations of someone or something real.

I think I need to get that tattooed on my hand, so the next time someone says 'that's me' I can just flash them an explanation without getting that annoyed tone of voice when I explain, no, it isn't about you. Remember that for any writer you meet, whether she is writing science fiction or he's into literary prose or someone else mentions romance. It isn't about you, or anyone else in the writer's life.

Somewhere between sometimes and often, it isn't even about the writer. Those story bits are so close to us because we created them. Yet like children, they have to go and live lives of their own.