{"id":2322,"date":"2012-04-20T11:00:34","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T16:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=2322"},"modified":"2012-04-20T11:00:34","modified_gmt":"2012-04-20T16:00:34","slug":"when-real-life-fiction-collide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=2322","title":{"rendered":"When Real Life & Fiction Collide"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not the kind of writer who brandishes the threat, “You might be in my next novel.” It’s not that I have any problem with it — that Joe Buckley<\/a> thing is hilarious — but it’s just not my thing. I feel weird appropriating the people and situations I know.<\/p>\n

I actively have trouble using real places, because then I feel an intense pressure to get everything right. I’ve got no trouble making details up on the fly. This town has an indoor pool! This town has a series of underground tunnels! These are cool when I’ve invented a town and there are no real-life rules to follow.<\/p>\n

Real world example!<\/p>\n

I was living in Manhattan, Kansas, when I was working on my first novel. Every day I used to drive home from work on Anderson, and I’d pass a street called “Edgerton.” I thought to myself That’s a cool name for a town. My main character should be from Edgerton, Wisconsin. <\/em>Cool. I make up a town and set two chapters in it. I move on with my life. Good times.<\/p>\n

Fast forward several years later, because this is a blog post and blog time is like that. My husband and I are driving up visit my family in Wisconsin. I happen to be skimming the atlas while we’re driving, and what should I see?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Are — is the world fucking serious<\/em> right now?!<\/p>\n

I ranted and swore while my husband laughed his ass off, and I set it on the back burner until we got home. Then I took to Google Earth, trying to get the feel for the place to see if I could make this work with my existing story. I couldn’t, partially because I couldn’t get over that my made up town really existed.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Then I decided that I might as well set the novel in the places I live. What the hell — why not? I know the roads, I have the routes, I know places to hang out and get laid and look at the stars at midnight. So I gave it a shot.<\/p>\n

Epic failure.<\/p>\n

I like the idea. I love when shows and movies and books are set in the places I live — except when it’s done poorly. I am, as a writer, plagued by the idea of doing it poorly<\/em>. When you do good, it’s good. When you do poorly, it quickly becomes the most notable feature of your story. More than once I’ve wanted to send authors a quick message: Hey, Lawrence has a university you know.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not the kind of writer who brandishes the threat, “You might be in my next novel.” It’s not that I have any problem with it — that Joe Buckley thing is hilarious — but it’s just not my thing. I feel weird appropriating the people and situations I know. I actively have trouble using […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}