Life in Fiction

I’ve been asked more than once if any events or people from my real life ever make it into my writing. And of course they do, but where and how much?

There’s a phrase that’s frequently seen on the copyright page of a book. The page no one really looks at if they’re simply reading it. Usually something along the lines of, “This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.”

Now that I have an actual book coming out, I’ve been thinking more frequently about those who have inspired little bits and pieces of it. This book takes place in the ‘real’ world—rather than in outer space or on some completely fabricated fantasy planet like many of my other projects—so the little bits seem easier to see. How do those nuggets of reality make it in there? Is there any conscious thought to picking and choosing them or is it completely random?

Although Ghost Tamer is set in Chicago, a city I lived in for seventeen years, and does draw upon my experiences there, the concept itself was never based on reality. It was based on a nightmare. 

I had a dream that my friend Joe and I were riding the el after an Improv class and that he was lecturing me on the basic rules of improv, which I was insisting that I knew already, when out train flew off the rails and crashed. I woke in a cold sweat and decided to write about the dream. As that segment became a novel, improv class became an open mic, the lecture became a supportive critique, and Joe got an engagement ring he was preparing to propose to his girlfriend with. (He also got a girlfriend.) But throughout all the changes in the novel, he remained Joe. Many other characters changed names and functions as the book grew and morphed, but Joe was always Joe. Of course he’s not a one-to-one copy of the Joe I know in ‘real’ Chicago, but the inspiration is there. He made it in, and he stayed in. 

Of course, all writers like to threaten to write the people that piss them off into their books, but I do wonder how many of us end up doing it. I did consciously write three distasteful characters into Ghost Tamer and model them after the three worst ex-boyfriends that I’ve ever had the misfortune to date. I mixed in parts of their names, parts of their personalities, and even bits of physical descriptions. But in reality, I don’t think anyone would recognize them, and I think on some level, I did that on purpose. As fun as it sounds, I found I would rather not give them a spotlight, even if one of them does get his comeuppance in the end. 

There is a cat in Ghost Tamer. He is modeled directly upon Jake, who I had for sixteen years and who died in 2020. Although I did not find him in a dumpster, like Raely found Blitz. And his name was the shelter name for one of my current cats, Cloud. It was easy to slide Blitz into Raely’s life in a believable way, to have her concerned for his safety, and make him a realistic minor character because I knew what Jake would have done in those fabricated situations. Or could at the very least make very educated guesses.

Other than Jake and Joe, there aren’t many fully pulled people in Ghost Tamer. There are inspirations and amalgamations. James the lawyer is a combination of two lawyers that I know, one in Nashville and one in Chicago, who both happen to be short, energetic, no BS kind of guys. It was fun to stick them in there.

There are many little things that I’ll pull for writing that no one would know are from life but me. The way a certain smell hits a character’s memory, or the sight of the stars in the winter sky, the way the el tracks shine in the moonlight. Little thoughts that I’ve had or images that have struck me. They’ve tucked themselves into my subconscious and spring out occasionally to decorate the pages. 

Some people who read Ghost Tamer will wonder if Raely is based at all on me. And since it is a very close first person POV, some of her thoughts will undoubtedly mirror mine, but if anything, Raely is a much more extreme version of my twenty-something self. She says things that I never would have had the guts to say out loud, and honestly, curses much more than I did back then. Her comebacks are much more on point than mine (which are usually hours after the fact). I’m also much more in touch with my emotions than Raely is. She’s her own girl.

I think, honestly, every character is some kind of extension of some life experience, or desired life experience. Because it’s the lens through which we write. It is funny when someone points out something that I’ve written and compares it to something from life that I’ve never thought of before. And I wonder, did I do that subconsciously? Or is this just how the story looks from their lens?