My Book is Not About Me

I have attended enough presentations and met with enough authors to know that a question that constantly pops up for writers is "Is this book about you?" Or "Is this character based on someone you know?" "Your character is gay, does that mean you are?" "Your parents are divorced, so are the ones in your book, is this about your life?"

The answer, usually, is no. My book is not about me. Yes, there will always be parts of the author in their book, because the book is a part of the author and it's impossible to completely separate the two, but on the whole, most novels are not the thinly veiled autobiographies readers expect them to be.

J.K. Rowling writes about wizards, but that doesn't mean she knows magic (though it would be awesome if she did). I am not a hermaphrodite, but that doesn't mean I can't write about one. And for any members of the secret service reading my blog, I do think our government could make a few chances, but I am not about to head up a coup.

Making up stories and creating truly believable fictional characters, though, that's what makes an author great. Give the author a little credit and believe in the power of their imagination and skill, because if they really did write all of their books about themselves, there would be no variation in characters, nor difference in plot. Things could get boring very quickly.

PS: If you ever do find yourself transported in real life to another dimension, world, or time via wardrobe, TARDIS, or hole in space, please do write your autobiography, I'd love to read it.

Writing Like Yourself

Today multiple friends linked me to this website which will take a piece of your text and tell you which famous author you write like. About the third time it showed up on my feed, I tried it.

Chapter 8 (my favourite) of Zenith resulted with Dan Brown. So did chapter 1 and chapter 41. Apparently Zenith is written in a style scarily similar to Dan Brown.
My current WIP (which desperately needs a better working title) is similar to Margaret Atwood. Now, I can see the cynical angle here, but I had no idea Margaret Atwood was that sarcastic.
The first chapter of The Conqueror gave me, surprise surprise, Dan Brown. I don't know what it is with me and that guy, I guess I'll have to read one of his books to find out. Strangely enough, though, the second chapter resulted in Douglas Adams. I'm still trying to figure that one out. Don't get me wrong, I'm flattered, just terribly confused.

Here's the thing, though, you will never write like Chuck Palahniuk or Stephen King. I will never write like Dan Brown no matter how many times I receive that result. Every author is uniquely different than all the others, even if they use similar vocabularies or sentence structures, even if they write on the same topics. You could write the same scenes with the same characters and still you will never write the exact same book as anyone else. That's a good thing! Work it! Find your personal authorial voice and expand upon it! Go forth and create something new, not just a copy of something already available.

But hey, if you do have the ability to copy someone else's style, look into ghost writing, you could make a killing.