the guilt of being a writer.

Would you believe me if I told you that this blog is only half of what I write?

Maybe more than half.

But, I write for myself. Stories. Things with a coherent beginning, middle, end. Characters.

Ah, characters.

I am not the kind of person who can dream up particularly original characters. All my characters are based on people. Me, mostly, because I know myself best. But there are others...

There are some characters that I call revenge characters. When I say that they'll regret hurting me, I mean what I say.

There are others, I just copy things from them. It almost feels like plaguerism, but they haven't copyrighted their eye colour, the way they lope down the corridors. It makes characters interesting, when they're real.

But now I am presented with every writer's dilemma. How much is too much? Everything I write I know, everything I write he has told me, or I have seen for myself. I cut and copy from my own inventory. Everything I write is how I feel, how I felt, how things, people, make me think. I add things on, because it's a story and not a diary - a bit more drama, but the bare bones are real and raw. It's all anonymous, but it's not a particularly flattering image I have created.

But when someone is a friend, a friend who has hurt you but now you're all over that, is it okay to still write about it? Surely if anyone leaves a mark like that, that becomes a personal experience? Am I breaking any unwritten privacy laws? Is it not bad enough that I cry myself to sleep in private, am I not even allowed to write about that, either? 

Sometimes I feel like I have too much power, as a writer. If I wanted to I could expose so much about people, lie and cheat until they become truly detestable. The medium I write, it doesn't matter what's fact and what's fiction as long as it's all scandalous and exciting.

I'm sorry if I pull your story apart. I'm sorry if you think I'm crazy or if anyone who reads it will think that you're crazy. It's all anonymous, but we all have brains. It's just what I do. My experiences are all research. 

But I will tell you this. What I write about anyone is the truth to me. It's how I felt, how you are. I won't change that. I'll put us in a dystopic futuristic city where you and I are both high on Mary Jane, but it doesn't matter whether it's here or on Mars you and I will be who we are, and I'll paint that the best I can. The story might be different but the character wil lbe the same in fact and in fiction. And you know I don't believe in censoring anything.