Non è facile andare d’accordo con me.
A volte mi impunto. E penso che sia la bambina in me a dettare le regole.
Quando chiudo le porte in faccia a chi pensa di valere di più: per moralismi facili, etichette inutili, ruoli sterili.
Quando non voglio sprecare neanche un minuto del mio tempo con chi si maschera e vive in palazzi di facciata, pieni di luci all’esterno, vuoti e bui dentro.
Quando non mi importa se può esserci un legame di sangue, se a quel sangue non c’aggiungi il cuore, perché altrimenti diventa pozza fetida, che fa ammalare.
Quando preferisco la compagnia di me stessa e il silenzio alle chiacchiere vacanti e ai sorrisi di circostanza, al perbenismo mediocre. Quando non sopporto chi giudica, chi si lamenta senza attivarsi per cambiare, chi vomita addosso agli altri le proprie sacre verità fatte di buonismo o arroganza;
chi cerca di rubare la vita altrui, condizionando ogni pensiero, alimentando il senso di inadeguatezza e di colpa. Non è facile andare d’accordo con me. Ma non è la bambina che mi abita a deciderlo. È la vecchia che sono a guidarmi: quella che ha già vissuto mille vite, infiniti respiri, che ha cicatrici profonde e rughe nell’anima, che non ha più pazienza e non vuole sprecare ancora il suo tempo. La vecchia che abita in me, scalza e vestita di orgoglio,
gli occhi da folle, lo sguardo da saggia,
coriacea e fiera, mi dice: “RICORDA CHI SEI!”... E poi scegli.
Margherita Roncone
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hey! this is chance & here’s week 2's prompt. when you write or create an oc, do you like to reference elements from your life? if yes, name a few. if no, why not?
Howdy! Thanks for the ask! Sorry for the delay in answering, life tried to eat me again rude.
Short answer:
Oh boy do I!
I typically pull inspiration from my personal struggles such as my mental/physical health/disabilities (been chronically ill, am deaf without hearing aids), and other elements.
Long answer (most of which is under a cut):
Oh boy do I!
As I said, I typically pull inspiration from my personal struggles, the biggest ones being my physical/mental health and my disability.
This is a huge change from when I first started writing. I would either go full on self insert mode (which I view as cringe now, but I was learning the ropes and it was helpful to my growth as a writer), or I would be like "omz it's so tacky when authors pull inspiration from themselves, that's so cocky!". I was rather extreme when I was a kid XD
I used to avoid writing about my disability simply because I had:
Never seen it done
Thought that it was what I was "supposed" to write, and that my disability had to be written about in a certain way or no one would read it or allow it to be published
And I wasn't interested in stories that people wanted or expected me to write about deaf/hoh people; we aren't tragedies. Give me a deaf person running around a magical world making friends!
And then I realized I could write it*. It wasn't egotistical to pull inspiration from my life. That's what all creators do, intentionally or not. I'm one of those creators that purposefully pulls inspiration/traits from my life and puts them into my characters.
But, with some caveats:
Does it add to the character?
For example, Mark originally was such a pain in the butt that when I went back and read my very first draft of the story (back in high school), I had to stop because Mark was just that hateable.** He was angry, self centered which stemmed from his anger, and I just couldn't relate to this guy. The problem is, House of Moons without Mark as the main character, isn't House of Moons at all. So for years, I put the story on hold, and just kind of hoped that one day it would come to me.
When I found out that I could write about my disability my way, I realized Mark needed my hearing loss.
When I was Mark's age, I was furious with the world for a number of reasons. And one of them was because of how horribly the world treated me as a disabled person. Sometimes I was mocked or excluded because I wasn't able to hear. Sometimes it was because the world treated me as special, just because I couldn't hear.
Anything good I did was "Oh wow! You're hearing impaired and you did that? That's so brave!". While in hindsight I know those comments probably came from a good place, it still hurt, and it still hurts to feel as if my accomplishments are intrinsically tied to my ability to hear.
Getting that from everywhere but your family is exhausting. Over time, infuriating. Once I gave Mark his hearing loss (which is the exact same kind of hearing loss I have), his anger made sense. It also gave me a starting point to explore more reasons why he was so angry. So Mark is now angry at his parents for never being around. The magical community for simultaneously fawning over and ostracizing him and his family for something he can't help. His neighborhood and (at first) school for treating him as something breakable because of his hearing loss.
Mark isn't angry at himself for being born with a hearing loss which gradually (for whatever reason) got worse over time. He's angered by how he's treated due to that hearing loss, and a lot of other things too.
Mark sharing my hearing loss adds to his character. Now I love writing him, he's relatable and even though he's angry and can be a jerk, there's a reason behind it and the possibility for growth.
Can I make this trait the character's own?
While I make sure the trait I'm giving the character makes sense, if it doesn't actually help make the character the character, then I nix the idea.
For example (moving the spotlight from Mark for a moment here), Harris and his siblings have PTSD. I have PTSD. Harris and his family have PTSD for very different reasons than I do. If I were to take away the PTSD from any of those characters their story would literally make no sense. They all lived through an unspeakable trauma. For them to not have some sort of physical or psychological scarring makes no sense and is a disservice to the reader.
But how Harris deals with his trauma is different than how his sister and older brother deal with it. They all have PTSD, they all have a shared trauma, but they all cope differently.
And because their PTSD comes from a different place than mine, their coping strategies are different too***. And because in real life, people with shared traumas will still have different coping styles. So how Harris deals with his PTSD (physically hiding often times), is different than how Acida, his sister does (building a blanket fort or stress baking). And of course, their older brother Fanggore copes by making sure his siblings are accounted for and then reads a book.
So typically, I use some part of myself to give myself a starting point in helping flesh out the characters. But I make sure that it's relevant to the character and actually makes sense for them to have that positive or negative trait.
While I focused on my struggles, I do like slipping in positive traits too! I have one character that's very into music and writes lyrics (which I do), another who has my zany sense of humor (I work hard to make sure each character has a unique sense of humor, rather than just everyone being snarky).
Overall, I'm one of those people that really draws inspiration from my personal experiences. I use it more as a starting point and then let my imagination make something new from it.
Thanks for the ask! :D
~
~
*Cannot tell you how mind-blowing it was to realize that not only was I completely capable of writing about my disability in stories that I would want to read, but also that people would be interested in reading it. Still blows my mind some days.
**I will note here that autocorrect was overly enthusiastic and corrected "hateable" to "hittable" and I'm quite sure everyone felt that way. I also had to stop reading what I wrote cause I was good enough of a writer to know when writing was bad (and at the time it was) but I was also not strong enough of a writer at the time to fix what needed fixing.
***If I were to give Harris and his siblings my exact kind of PTSD (the cause and how I react) that would also make no sense...it really, really wouldn't. That would be silly! /derogatory
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