You can’t see me right now, but I’m 5’1. My hair is “platinum” rather than Marilyn-Monroe-blond. I have never worn food, although I once saw a meat dress in the Musee George Pompidou in Paris. Close enough.
Two things: I like to make things up. And I like to inhabit characters in my mind. I’ve been doing it for years. I started early, daydreaming in class. Slipping into my room after school to write volumes based on the characters I imagined into being. Wearing out my poor little typewriter, one spool of ribbon after another (remember ribbon?), telling their stories. Wearing their joys and sorrows and their experiences in the worlds I also invented. It never stopped.
Many say that real writers have to write. We can’t stop ourselves. But isn’t it more accurate that we fiction writers have to tell stories, and that in the process of telling stories, we have to tell the stories of those people we’ve made up?
(Excuse me for a moment. I have a dance number.)
I’m back . So if I were to write a novel based on a tall golden-haired singer with heavy makeup I’d be right there in her head, even as she walks down the street and people stare at her and whisper to the people walking next to them. Then the threatening message is left on my car and I’d realize that the note is not meant for me but that I have to warn the intended target who is performing that night in a meat dress at the local music venue.
Try this at home. Anyone can do it. You don’t have to write it down.
I have to duck out now. Someone who looks just like George Clooney is waiting for me. And, by the way, don’t worry about correcting those people who think I’m Beyoncé. I get that a lot.
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