Am I In It? Holding up the mirror.

I’ve blogged about this before but it’s an enduring question. Here’s how it goes. I walk into a crowded room to meet friends. Someone asks me what I do for a job. I’ve completely given up telling people I’m a psychologist as it makes them behave strangely and ask me if I can read their minds. Which of course I can’t.

Because I’m writing a full length contracted non-fiction book and I’m a member of the Society of Authors, and that all this is brand new to me, I’ve tested out saying that I’m an author. Or a writer. It’s nearly as bad as being a psychologist. So I’m in the crowded room with people I know fairly well.

‘What you up to these days, Jacqui?’
‘I’m writing. I’m an author.’
People look at each other in disbelief as it was only about six years ago I was crying into my vodka about ‘never amounting to anything’ and looking like I was about to disappear into prescribed menopausal invisibility.
‘What have you written then?’
‘I’ve written some short stories that are published and a book about identity. And I’m working on a novel.’
Silence. Friend sidles up with worried look.
‘Am I in it?’
I want to tell them that they couldn’t possibly be in it as I’ve made it up, but this would cause more consternation as it would imply I’ve made things up about them.
‘No. You’re not in it.’
‘What’s it about then?’ Which actually means ‘I don’t believe you and I’m interrogating you further.’
‘It’s about this woman who finds out her boyfriend is having an affair.’
Sympathetic look.
‘Is it about you then?’
‘No. My boyfriend isn’t having an affair. I made it up.’
‘So your boyfriend in the book is having an affair.’
‘It’s not my boyfriend in the book as I’m not the main character. She’s called Clementine.’

It is confusing. I sometimes query myself and wonder where I have dredged up the ideas for my fiction writing from. Scenarios, situations, people: are they part of me? When I hold up a mirror to the self these people are not me at all. Or my family or friends. Yet I do recognise them. To invoke an emotion in someone else, be it a fictional character or a reader, surely you must have experienced that emotion in real life yourself in order to draw on the experience?

Not necessarily. Psychological research into visualisation has shown that the mind cannot easily distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. This is why closing your eyes and imagining you are on a beach is so relaxing to your body; your mind is telling it you are actually there. Likewise the suspension of belief in film and television; we go through a range of emotions to empathise with the film. All these components could have been internalised on a number of levels, even through art and literature.

Turning this on it’s head, this must mean that every situation I place my characters in I am experiencing myself. I ‘feel’ my characters but I am not them. I view them as imaginary people in an imaginary world where an imaginary situation is happening. Yet I recognise them as a collation of pieces of identity I am familiar with, a mix-and-match mash of aspects of many people that I have experienced, vicariously through a medium or in person. No wonder I recognise them!

Am I in it? I don’t intentionally base my novels on myself or anyone that I know. I do, however, listen carefully to what people tell me, their descriptions of people and how they feel about them. That human interaction is the glue that holds my characters together in the story, makes them human. The commonalities of situations and interactions interest me, and unusual ways that people hold memories. I’m constantly holding up a mirror to all these things and all this informs my writing.

So it’s not about anyone I know, yet everyone I know or have experienced is bound to be somewhere. Next time someone asks me ‘Am I In It?’ I’ll tell them that yes, a part of you must be, but so is everyone else I know! Or I could simply tell them I’m a psychologist, on reflection that might be the easier option.