My Life, Writing—Writing my life

By Keith N Fisher

To my horror last week, I, once again, lived a chapter from a book I wrote. I first wrote about this experience back in October of 2012 in the blog post called, Be Careful What you Write—it Might be your Script.

I wrote,

Parts of that story came back and slapped me in the face, the other night. Not in a good, editorial way, but as I lived the plot. Many of us write from our experiences, but how many of us experience what we write?

Because of privacy issues, I won’t tell you the details. Suffice it to say I keep living the plots I wrote in a story fifteen years ago. It’s a coming of age story about a girl and her father and it’s haunting me.

The manuscript was rejected when I submitted it, and I’ve always planned to re-write to resubmit. To that end, I got into it about a year ago, but had to stop. I realized the similarities and I couldn’t bare to see my daughter go through all, that.

Fast forward to last week and the incident I lived through. To my chagrin, the déjà vu

was almost unbearable. I was proud, however, to find myself doing the things my character did.

I’m still a little afraid of the plot I wrote, but I realized the real life details could improve the story. Of course I’ve got to write the improved version, but I might wait until my daughter grows up.

I’ve been writing stories for so long, I guess it was bound to happen. I hope it doesn’t happen again. Has this ever happened to you?

Good luck with your writing—see you next week.