Well that didn't work
Nov. 5th, 2010 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tephraI managed to get to 6710 words yesterday, but unfortunately in doing so I managed to squick myself, resulting in an urge to take a shower in bleach.
I know a lot of people take the shortcut of basing characters on people they know. I haven't before and I accidentally did yesterday. If it had stayed to just the one character I probably could have continued on, telling myself I'd tweak him away from the real person in editing. Unfortunately when he needed to mention another character I put down the first name that came to mind and soldiered on. Even that would have been fine but as I was writing I remembered the real person has a real friend by that name and their relationship dynamic puts a hell of a lot of subtext on the relationship between the characters. The next thing I knew I was going "Ew.... Ew ew ew ew... ewewewewEWwww!" as I was trying to write these characters and get to my word count goal.
Obviously this is not a situation that will encourage me to write. It doesn't matter if real person's real friend is white and male and fictional person's fictional friend is black and female, the association has been made in my head.
So today names are being changed. Also, some details. Unfortunately this might not help all that much with the mental associations, but it's the best idea I have other than scrapping the whole thing and starting over with something completely different.
I know a lot of people take the shortcut of basing characters on people they know. I haven't before and I accidentally did yesterday. If it had stayed to just the one character I probably could have continued on, telling myself I'd tweak him away from the real person in editing. Unfortunately when he needed to mention another character I put down the first name that came to mind and soldiered on. Even that would have been fine but as I was writing I remembered the real person has a real friend by that name and their relationship dynamic puts a hell of a lot of subtext on the relationship between the characters. The next thing I knew I was going "Ew.... Ew ew ew ew... ewewewewEWwww!" as I was trying to write these characters and get to my word count goal.
Obviously this is not a situation that will encourage me to write. It doesn't matter if real person's real friend is white and male and fictional person's fictional friend is black and female, the association has been made in my head.
So today names are being changed. Also, some details. Unfortunately this might not help all that much with the mental associations, but it's the best idea I have other than scrapping the whole thing and starting over with something completely different.
