Debbie Ohi’s recent cartoon in her Will Write For Chocolate series, made me laugh. And then it made me think.
For a long time I held off on writing fiction in part because I would have to draw from my life. I was worried that if my character had a crabby mother I’d have to put up with my own mother crying down the phone, asking why I hated her. Or if my character had romantic troubles, I’d offend my husband, who would say “is that what you really think?”
(Of course, all this would rely on my being successful, but we don’t worry too much about that, do we? Not even when we know the odds of being published…)
But I must be getting old, because lately I’ve decided not to let that bother me anymore. I want too much to write to let one more excuse stop me – and a weak one, at that.
If I have to spend the rest of my life explaining that the crabby mother in my story isn’t based on my mother, then it’ll only be because I followed my dreams, wrote something good, and became successful enough that people wanted to ask me about the crabby mother in my story.
Things for which my own mother will be proud of me.