Insecure Writer’s Support Group Blog Post for July

[image error]Welcome summer. Glad to see you here. I hope wherever you are that the weather is cooperating. We had a long winter, a wet spring, and now we’re hoping for those wonderful summer days.

July 3 question: What personal traits have you written into your character(s)?

This is an interesting question because I don’t think I write my own characteristics into my characters, but I do write characteristics I see in family and friends. If I do write any of my own, it would be those I wish I had–for example, I’m a wimp. I like to give my female characters gumption. I’m also short, so it’s not unusual for me to make my heroines taller than I am, although, in the case of Forever and Always, my ballerina, Brandi is petite.

What I do occasionally write into my stories and the lives of my characters are events that impacted my own life. For example, in Hello Again, Charlie suffers a devastating miscarriage. Being able to relate to that pain makes it easier to write about it.

I do use many of the actions and personality traits of those around me in my stories, expressions I hear them say that I attribute to the characters. I also use bits and pieces of current events and my knowledge of the past to add depth to the stories I write. A trip to a restaurant in Anchorage, Alaska, made it into The White Iris, Book Three of the Harvester Files, and my hometown makes it into No Good Deed.

The closest I’ve come to putting any of myself into one of my novels would be Same Time Next Year, not because what happened to the heroine happened to me, but because i was seventeen that year and got to relive the music and nostalgia.

What about you? Do you put yourself in your stories?

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