FIRST WIFE
STATUS: Dreaming of August and life in our new home. I am the luckiest girl in the whole world. Seriously. And not just because of the house. I have a great life to go inside of it, too!
FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: Anyone remember when the Facts of Life went to Paris? I sure do. I love how they changed the intro to show how the girls were flying abroad. You knew right away it was a Very Special Episode.
I was reading yesterday about a new novel, First Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld. I am fascinated by the premise, which is not-so-subtly based on Laura Bush’s life and, apparently, is raising some eyebrows in D.C. (Btw, gorgeous cover. Luuurve it.) What I think is so interesting is that Sittenfeld took aspects of the First Lady’s life, created a character around them, then fictionalized the poo out of most everything else.
In a sense, that’s what all of us writers do. Consciously or not, we’re taking things that have happened–at least in our own experiences–and then we build a story from that foundation. I’m 100 percent comfortable doing that with my own life; Sittenfeld made me stop and think how much we writers do that with other people’s lives, too. Sometimes we do it overtly, sometimes not.
My next novel (not DONUT DAYS, the one after that, which is all written and in the queue and which I am so totally pumped about it, I get an adrenaline rush every time I think about it) is based on a lot of real-life happenings. Granted, they happened to me, but they happened to a lot of other people, too. My characters reflect that. Is there a line we writers shouldn’t cross when we craft our characters and base them on true events, on real people?–I don’t know. But I’m still excited as heck to see what happens with the story. And to pick up Sittenfeld’s novel in the meantime.
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