Over Relate Much?

Is it all writers who put way too much of themselves and people they know into their characters, or is it just me?

I'm currently working on my novel about Roxy, one of my ten personalities. It's a story I've had in my head ever since high school and have been trying to get out for just as long, and it's finally coming together. Yet I find as I write it that I have way too much of myself, my friends, and my life in it.

After one of my creative bouts where I managed to write about 40 pages, I realized when I was done that not only had I over identified with Roxy way too much, I had inserted into my story a parallel of a relationship that I went through in high school. In looking at the concept of whether being given everything you materially desire is enough of a reason to love someone, I was revisiting my first serious relationship, and thoughts I hadn't reexamined since I was 16. I found myself hurting for Roxy as though she were real, and knowing exactly what she was feeling in dealing with someone who she loved but wasn't sure how. (She is of course real to me but not in a tangible "she's an actual physical person" way.)

Before long I was listening to songs from Moulin Rouge over and over again and thinking constantly about the depth of my main character and where her heart really lies. "Le Tango de Roxanne" made me desperate to write every time I heard it because it seemed to me as though it was a cry from the man in my story who was fighting the hardest for Roxy's affections.

And then there's the fact that Pansy has taken on so many characteristics of my friend Claire. And that my friend Brian, who I had long lost contact with, was almost immediately inserted as a vital character into my story shortly after I found him again on Facebook. Vivian the detective is really Jenni's voice of logic and reason. My best friend Justin is vital to the book and Roxy's well being as well. And the hero in my story has become my husband, and the character I yearn for Roxy to be with even as I can't see how to separate her from the other man vying for her affections, the man who has given her everything she could ever wish for.

The people in my lives are essential to my book, and it would be nothing without the love and characteristics they all possess that have inspired me. The passionate presence they provide in my life has poured a soul into each and every one of them who appears in my book. I am invested in every single one of my characters, I bleed for them when they bleed, and I can't wait to find out what happens to them all. I drive myself crazy trying to be true to all of them and true to the beauty behind them that comes from the people I love most. I am entirely unable to write anyone as a caricature because they are all real and breathing and alive to me. I cannot be detached from what I write. I must pour everything I have into it or the experience is not worthwhile in my mind.

I remember when I first realized this was in Honors English 10 J (the J was for Journalism) Over and over again my teacher would try to beat into me the idea that I was to write objectively. There was to be nothing personal or of opinion in what I wrote for his class. I was supposed to be utterly apart from my assignments.

I could not entirely do it. I had started writing fan fiction and plays when I was only 14 and it was impossible for me to write any way that wasn't personal. I am invested in whatever my pen turns out.

I have of course learned to do passably objective pieces for academic reasons or I never would have graduated from high school (let alone college). But each time I have snuck a little bit of myself into a paper, and each time it has felt wrong not to do more, like I was betraying my ideals. Why write if not to put heart and soul into the words?

It is because of this that I may never finish my novel. I want what is right for all my characters as people, and they say you cannot please everyone all the time. Particularly with Roxy I find I may not be able to give her what she needs, and I cannot write it unless I am true to her. I have yet to figure out exactly what it is Roxy wants from life in the first place, so it is possible I will never be able to satisfactorily end her story. I have a history of not finishing pieces because I couldn't make them turn out in a way that made me happy with what I had done.

I have to believe other writers have this same torment. Not all, but some of them surely must. There has to be authors out there who carry on the same love affair I do with the characters they write.

If I could only find them and ask them what they do about such problems. ;)

But I think I know. They, like me, find a way to be true to their characters at whatever cost.

I find that very inspiring.