Pretentious "I'm a writer!" blog post. Sorry, not sorry ;)

So, "As a writer" (See, I told you! lol) I draw inspiration from everywhere, my own experiences, others' experiences, other works of fiction and non fiction, and sometimes - okay, a lot of the time - I'm just making it up as I go along just like the rest of us. But I have never experienced this before, where something I wrote actually perfectly mirrors someone's real lived experience, right down to using the exact same words to describe it, AFTER I had already written it.

I've got cold chills.

So for some setup, this is about my latest novel, "The Green-Eyed Maid Inn" and it's about parts of the story that aren't public yet, so I promise to keep spoilers to an absolute minimum!

But, basically in Chapter 3, I introduce a new character. There is a lot of subtext going on with this character that you might not initially catch, and that's intentional. I really went deep on their psychology and motivations, deeper than I had intended. By the end of the chapter, a friend of this character, who is somewhat more brutally honest and blunt, actually spills the beans on a little bit of what's going on in this person's head? But at least the way I've tried to craft it.

At one point, another character, a friend of this person, opens up and talks about their lives, how they missed out on simple things like birthdays. This is a tiny spoiler, but it's important for the context of this blog post.

I had actually gone back and added this extra context to chapter 3 because it felt too inorganic the way things had left off at the time. It felt unfinished, and in retrospect it's really the first big turning point for the novel's main character.

About an hour or two later, I was in "Youtube and chill" mode enjoying one of my new favorite youtube creators, an opera singer and voice coach called The Charismatic Voice. She does deep dive analyses on lyrics, voice education and vocal technique (If you didn't know, I am also a musician and MASSIVE music nerd. I absolutely love this kind of thing).

Anyway, I don't want to say too much more about the exact context of what this video was about because the important part was actually a tangent she had gotten off on, and she used the EXACT same words that the aforementioned new character's friend had used. Word for word.

My jaw literally dropped like a cartoon anvil. I rewound the video because I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Anyway, I'm not some kind of psychic genius with deep, profound insights into the human psyche or anything, nor am I a great author with millions of fans (not sure I'd want to be!). But hearing her talk about her experiences, so perfectly mirroring what I had written, it felt so, so amazing, like I had really tapped into something unique.

I just hope going forward, I'm able to keep it going.

The first 7 chapters really comprise Act 1, and I'm playing with different ideas for Act 2 still. As I mentioned in my Author's Note on the first chapter, it's not currently "complete" by any means, but posting one chapter a week I should be able to build the proverbial railroad while staying well ahead of the locomotive. If and when I do finish it, I'll go back and retroactively tag it complete, and probably move to a twice a week posting schedule.

But I just found this whole experience so unique and interesting- I really do get cold chills just thinking about it - that I wanted to share.

Happy Holidays! <3