imaginarycircus

I usually try to avoid placing real life events, from my own experience, in my fiction, at least not transparently. I change details to make the situation different from my own, hoping that only people who know me very well will know how it compares to my own experience. I've found that I do not have adequate authorial control over my direct experiences because I am too attached to how it was, how it felt. I can't change those moments to fit my story, to change their shape and feel. And those moments feel different set into fiction, like a water buffalo under a mattress instead of a pea.

But for some reason I am seeing the catalyst, the event that kicks off a chain reaction in this novel, in an almost exact version of something that happened to me. It isn't something that very many people know about, but a few people will know. I'm very uncomfortable with it, but it is so perfect. It makes so much sense. Damn it. For now I am just going to write it that way and if it works, it works. And who knows if the book will ever be published. Right?