Do your stories change you?

[Bramblethorn]

Steve Albini recently posted some thoughts about artists who take on an asshole persona for reasons of irony or parody, but eventually get stuck in that persona; as per Kurt Vonnegut, "in the end, we are who we pretend to be".

Obviously writing is a little different to acting, in that we're usually portraying several characters rather than just one. But do you ever find that the characters you write end up influencing the person you are, for better or for worse? Does getting inside the head of a sweetheart or an asshole (or a sex fiend) change how you see the world?

 

[EarlyMorningLight]

At the moment, I’m working on several semi-autobiographical pieces, drawn loosely from my experiences or experiences of people I’ve known, either friends or lovers.

It’s making me realise that there were times in life where I was so in the moment that I didn’t stop to process, or that I wasn’t capable of processing, because I was in a long journey of coming to terms with the ways in which I was broken, and having physical/emotional relationships with people who were broken in their own ways. Sifting through both the sad and beautiful moments from a bit of a distance is helping me gain a whole lot of perspective.

 

[RowanWrites]

Yes... and no.

The "self" is an amalgam of our experiences, patterns, traumas, victories. Yes: it is inevitable that the feedback loop of creation modifies the creator.

But that self is not the true self; that is the mushy froth of our engagement with the world. At the deeper level, no. What flows through us, from us, does not change us, it is us. In that sense it may reveal something to us about what we are, but it is not changing that internal, eternal essence.

Sorry if this is going to woo-woo spiritual.

 

[Winter_Fare]

I don't have a lot of time for the idea that embracing a certain vibe, or certain type of positive energy can change you significantly as a person. It smacks of '90s self help books and magical thinking. Flowers grow in muck, don't they?

Writing stories and characters for fun puts me in a detached mindset for a time, much like role playing a character in someone else's story does. I explore a theme or plot and let some obscure part of myself manifest; it feels as though the creation has a life of its own. And yet, when the tale is told, it goes back to the mud it came from, much as I will I guess.

It takes a magnifying glass to what was already there, gives me a new perspective if I'm lucky, but I think the only thing it changes is my mood, and that temporarily.

 

[SimonDoom]

Yes, I think so, but it's hard to know for sure because I don't have anyone who can confirm whether my hunches on this subject are right or not.

I find writing erotic stories liberating. My mind is more open to more things than it was before. I am more confident than I was before that one's life is a canvas upon which one can paint what one wants, and f#$% those who don't like it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'd like to think so.

After writing erotica that moved people, and in a meaningful way, it made me more thoughtful about the things I wrote about; and it's sort of an evolving circle. I'm certainly more aware of gender (here's looking at you, Stickygirl), and went beyond the tropes in one of my better stories.

Whether or not I'm a better person remains to be seen, but I'm not dead yet, so there's hope!

 

[AlinaX]

For short, entertaining pieces, no I don't think there's much impact. For longer works that take months or even years to write, where the characters have depth, where there's lots of research, where ultimately you're investing in themes that really mean something to you, then absolutely. Writing stories can have a huge psychological impact.

 

[DouglasFinney]

artists who take on an asshole persona for reasons of irony or parody, but eventually get stuck in that persona; as per Kurt Vonnegut, "in the end, we are who we pretend to be".

The second novel that I wrote was an autobiographical roman a clef drenched in metafictional pretension. I workshopped large chunks of it in school over a number of terms with a pretty consistent cohort of fellow student fiction writers who came to associate me with the protagonist of my book; instead of discouraging them, I played into it by mimicking my first person narrator who was himself only, at best, a caricature of another, older me.

The biggest problem of the many was a post-doc instructor in the department who didn’t just buy the act—she wanted to fuck the act. Staying in character was a small price to pay for a lot of crazy wild sex for nine months until she moved to Paris for a research fellowship at Versailles. We toyed with a long distance relationship but she met an “authentic” Frenchman and that was that, although I would later be hook up with a senior taking that term’s fiction writing workshop with us.

Six weeks before graduation, however, I disavowed my novel in my thesis advisor’s office, which he had been pushing me to do for more than a year. That meant that I had just over a month to churn out a new novel and defend it. I dropped everything to write and for the next five weeks I put Ahab’s monomania to shame. I’d type for sixteen hours and then the senior would feed and fuck me and then she’d read my pages and give me her two cents.

It didn’t occur to me at the time but I had broken character, and the senior thought it was great. Unlike the post-doc, the senior had not swooned over my second novel. She respected me as a writer, she said, but she expected me to do better, and so when I reinvented myself with the third book I turned myself into a writer more like the one who she wanted me to be.

My craft was better off for listening to her. Decades have gone by and we’re divorced now, but she still reads my pages for pennies. Over the years, she’s helped me hone many voices, but she’ll never see what I write or who I am here. That is both frightening and exhilarating.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Heh. I think the least I can say is that my stories have helped me come to terms with some aspects of my sexuality. I'm pretty sure that I'm not as vanilla and straight as I always thought I was.
"So... you're getting aroused writing about futa? Okay then." Quote my lady love.

 

[Auden James]

Over the years, she’s helped me hone many voices, but she’ll never see what I write or who I am here. That is both frightening and exhilarating.

I don't see any submissions on your LIT profile. Do I miss something, or what writing of yours do you refer to with that "here?" Do you mean your posts on the forums?

 

[DouglasFinney]

I don't see any submissions on your LIT profile. Do I miss something, or what writing of yours do you refere to with that "here?" Do you mean your posts on the forums?

I mean writing that I’m working on now that I plan to post here.

 

[Auden James]

Ah, okay! Do already know which category it will most likely fall into?

 

[DouglasFinney]

I’m working on a novel that I hope to serialize in the I/T category.

 

[Auden James]

Thanks for the info!

 

[DouglasFinney]

No problem. Thanks for asking.

 

[8letters]

Do my stories change me? Yes. They let me put myself into the shoes of people that I don't meet in my small little world. For example, I was in a Verizon store when a woman who looked twenty came in with a baby in a car seat. I had an immediate negative reaction to her, that she was far too young to have baby and was being irresponsible to do so. Later, I wondered at my negative reaction to her. Why shouldn't she be able to have a baby when she's twenty if that's what she wants? Eventually, I wrote "Sister Has A Plan" about a eighteen-year-old woman who faces a lot of hostility because she's a single mom. When I was done writing the story, I was much more sympathetic to young, single mothers.

After the Stanford Swimmer rape tragedy when all the colleges were pushing "Positive Consent", I wondered what were they saying people should do. All the articles I read about it were vague as hell. "You should get positive consent every time for every step." Okay, what would that actually look like for a dating couple? So I made up a system for positive consent every time for every step and put it into a story, "My Sister Set Me Up On A Blind Date". And what sounded at first like an absolutely unworkable idea actually came out as not being too bad. Something I find funny is that no commenter has said, "You made that positive consent stuff all up, didn't you?"

 

[MrPixel]

... do you ever find that the characters you write end up influencing the person you are, for better or for worse? ...

Frankly? Melding into my main protagonist's persona has made me a kinder and better lover, and more tolerant and appreciative of those around me. It's been an interesting transformation.

 

[Seadog777]

In all my stories there is an element of truth in them, that had an effect on my life.

Reflecting back on those moments while writing a story, gives me a better appreciation of my life journey.

I won't write about the wars and deaths that I've seen though.

 

[stickygirl]

Yes... and no.

The "self" is an amalgam of our experiences, patterns, traumas, victories. Yes: it is inevitable that the feedback loop of creation modifies the creator.

But that self is not the true self; that is the mushy froth of our engagement with the world. At the deeper level, no. What flows through us, from us, does not change us, it is us. In that sense it may reveal something to us about what we are, but it is not changing that internal, eternal essence.

Sorry if this is going to woo-woo spiritual.

If we regard ourselves as entrenched in our values and views or worse still, try to become so, then we lose sight of what life is for. As RowanWrites suggests, we project ourselves into our characters, we play with the roles we create, but that very process forces us to focus on questions and situations that might not ever occur in real life.

I can see my younger self in my early stories and it's not a comfortable read for me now. If we keep a diary we can be mortified by what we later read. We should aspire to better ourselves through learning and experience and writing is part of that... am I actually quoting Jane Austen there?!

Being autistic I've read extensively to better understand why I am the way I am. A facet of asd is projecting a version of ourselves in order to fit in with the world - we do it consciously, where regular people pick up social skills innately. It's a process and I suspect autistic people never stop honing their skills. I can play with my characters, figure out how Hannah might behave, what she might say in a situation and anticipate how other characters interact with her. I guess my stories are partly a testbed for life skills. More importantly, they're fun. It should be fun.

 

[NotWise]

Not in any big way. Writing a character can temporarily emphasize traits I have in common with the character, but it won't make me something I'm not.

 

[comegently]

What an interesting question!
I think there's a lot of me in my protagonists anyway.
I find writing stories a good way to explore scenarios I have not experienced in real life.
Since these stories are erotic, I feel the eroticism while I am writing them.

 

[MsNatalie99]

I'd like to think so oh, yes. One of the beautiful things about writing is that it allows you to explore other perspectives and ideas through your characters. In my senior year of high school I had to write a paper on Ed Gein. Let me first say, that I'm in no way excusing or condoning any of his horrific crimes, but I came to understand how somebody could go so wrong. It was one of many reasons why I ultimately decided to go to school for youth / adolescent psychology. It's always been easier to judge then to empathize. And in writing, fiction and nonfiction, we get the opportunity, if only briefly, just see things through someone else's eyes.

 

[lovecraft68]

For my more serious work my writing doesn't change me, but it brings the parts of me I've worked hard to get under control much closer to the surface. Although I don't share some of the asshole characteristics of the antagonists I've created I share their malice, rage and outright hate, but for me the negative emotions aren't targeted at what theirs is, its just that general feeling of wanting the world to burn.

I don't have good and bad characters, I tend to write anti-hero, so its more bad and worse, lesser of the evils. A killer of killers is still a killer. All my characters have issues, they're not just mindlessly angry, they all have their reasons, and its a neat trick when you can create an asshole, but get the reader to, if not like them, see their side to some extent. So I basically spend a lot of time in my own dark places to make these people seem real, its not a nice place to visit, and no one would want to live there.

I routinely take breaks from those projects even if they're flowing well because too many days in that mindset start having adverse affects on my own behavior. I'll be the first to say that it doesn't take much to bring my inner asshole to the forefront.

 

[lovecraft68]

I’m working on a novel that I hope to serialize in the I/T category.

Let us know when its up, I'll check it out, I'm all for a good I/T opus, at least when there's story to it and not just taboo sex.

 

[SamScribble]

I don't think that my stories change me. But I think they might 'bring to the surface' parts of my persona that might not be front and centre on a day-to-day basis. If that makes sense.