Via Tea cozy, an interesting question from Lectitans that plagued me in the shower this morning.

How much can we know about the author herself based on the content of the book?

Coming at this from the writer's POV, I wonder if we really know how much of ourselves we reveal?

On the one hand, I know there are natural assumptions a reader could make about me through my writing that would be wrong. For example, in both RTG and AH [eta: AH turned out to be Funny How Things Change] (and my WIP) the main characters are church-going Christians who never struggle with their faith, not even when very bad things happen. So you might think I'm a woman of strong faith, when I'm really Edna St. Vincent Millay's tired agnostic. ("The tired agnostic longs for prayer more than the blest can ever do.") There are all kinds of assumptions you might make about my relationships with my parents based on my characters' relationships with theirs, but I can almost guarantee you'd be wrong in every case.

I remember laughing when one of the earliest novels I tried to sell (and then put away in a drawer) received a couple of rejections that both mentioned the "vividness of the Vermont setting." "You clearly know this area well and are comfortable in this setting," one of them said. Except...I've never been to Vermont. Never been further north than Scranton.

Because here's the thing: fiction writers are really good liars. We make things up. It's kind of the definition of fiction writing. And writing for me is partly the same as what reading meant to me: the trying-on of thoughts, ideas, experiences that are different from my own. Why in the world would I want to deliberately write about me and my stuff? I have to live with this every day. I want to write about something else!

A lot of what I write is a kind of sublimination, stuff I wish I was or did or believed. Even my overarching themes don't exactly tell you a lot about me. They are beliefs that I aspire to in the same way Scarlett O'Hara aspired to be a great lady like her mother, if she only had the time. Do I believe in the sacrifice of self for the greater good? Yes. Do I practice that belief? Err.....no. Do I love the choice Remy makes in AH? Yes! Would I make that choice myself? Uh uh. So in a way, my writing tells you more about who I wish I was than who I really am.

But then, I know that my "stuff" creeps into my writing without my permission. There is one particular line in RTG that went into the ms during the final revision. It was a stressful time both professionally (first book, finishing up tough revisions, looking down the road to publication and all that it meant) and personally with my autistic son struggling in school and at home. While the line fit the character naturally, it also perfectly expressed the frustration I was feeling. But I didn't realize how very revealing that line was until I read the galley and I felt horribly exposed, like someone had taped my private thoughts and broadcast them on TV or something. I considered cutting the line, but it was the turning point of a crucial scene and revealed as much about the character as it did about me. So I let it stand.

Still, I'm sure there are other lines and bits like this that I haven't picked up on, where I've told something about myself without being aware of it. But how does the reader know which are real and which are out-and-out lies and which are wishful thinking?

Anyway, some things you might pick up about me from my writing:

I like boys with dark hair.
I like mountain streams but not oceans.
I am impatient with pretense.
I think owls are cool.
I wish my feet were smaller.
I wish I was more athletic and less picky about food.
I am ultimately hopeful. Except about the feet thing. That's a lost cause.