Who’d I say I was?

Who’d I say I was?

I once worked in an office in DC where one of the people was in a very bad auto accident.  When that person came back to work sometimes we would be in the middle of a conversation and they would stop and say, “Who’d I say I was?”  At first everyone thought it was a joke, but we soon learned that the person had suffered some brain damage and at times did not know who they were.

I wonder if all writers have the same problem?  Not brain damage, although that may be true as well, but do we sometimes not know who we are?  Do you become your character?  Do you talk for them?  Feel what they are feeling on the paper?  How deeply do you get into the character’s mind and psyche?

What are you talking about, you ask?  I think we all pattern characters after people we know.  We may give them different names, sex, locations, occupations, etc. but way down deep there is a part of us that knows exactly who that character is based on.  So what you ask?  What if the person is someone you would rather forget about?  Maybe an ex-spouse or significant other that you are killing in a wonderfully horrible way in your project.  No problem.  I do things like that all the time. If you’ve ever wronged me or any member of my family I’m going to really make you pay for it in a book or screenplay.

Okay, so what’s your point, you ask?  By the way, you’re sure asking a lot of questions this week, but I digress.

The point is, at least for me I have a character in one of my mystery series I patterned after an actress I worked with and have become personal friend with as well.  Everyone in my family knows her and most have met her. She’s a lovely lady with grown children.

About a week ago, I was sound asleep and around 3am I stared to talk in my sleep.  I’ll stop here to let you get a drink before you read the rest of this because you can probably see what’s coming.  I have a rough time sleeping and talking is something I do almost every night.  Most of the time its more mumbling than talking, fortunately for me.  I even started singing karaoke one night, and believe me, the mumbling would have been better.

Back to the night in question.  As I said, about 3am, I started talking in my sleep.  Evidently, I was coherent enough for my wife to talk to me as well.  Good little wife that she is, she asked me what I was talking about.  That’s like asking a man what he is thinking about.  The obvious answer as ever man knows, and every woman denies, is sex, food or cars.  You know what the answer is, but you want it to be something you like: “I’m thinking about that lovely weekend we spent with your mother when I moved all her furniture from the house to the garage,  so she could paint.”

Back to me. At 3am the question was, “What are you doing?”  Ready for this?  I said, in words that, according to her, left no room for interpretation or doubt, “I’m on the beach in the Bahama’s with XXXXX.”  That being my actress friend’s name.

Be careful getting too deep into your alternate character.  It may not be a good thing.

The doctor said I will only have a few scars and the bones should heal if I wear the brace for another six weeks.