As A Writer

I have many role models. They range from writers to musicians to teenage bloggers to dead revolutionaries. Some are real and some are fictional.

I latch on to these people. With real people, sometimes their happiness can sometimes dictate my own. I live vicariously through these people.

I think that’s what most writers do. We live vicariously through our characters in order to feel accomplished or even alive, whatever you’d prefer to call it. Recently I wrote a short story where one of the characters had been shot and I felt it. I felt this thing sitting restlessly in my gut. I have to be able to get into these character’s heads in order to know their actions and what they’d say, but to do that I have to lose a bit of myself.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think every writer puts a bit of themselves into their characters. It’s impossible not to. But I definitely try to not make it the same part. Everyone has millions of facets swimming around in their bodies, little quirks that separate us. That separate ourselves into different pieces on the inside. As an artist, I don’t want to make the same thing over and over again. While I use a lot of the same themes and have a style that is hopefully my own, I don’t want to be a one trick pony. I have to convince myself that I’m not, or else I wouldn’t be able to write anymore.