Article: I Know Who Your Novel Is Really About…

Here's how it went: I wrote a novel about a soccer mom. I am a mom whose daughters played soccer. Therefore the novel must be about me, right? I get asked this question many times a week. I have pretty much run out of interesting ways to say no.

I understand. It happens to me, too. I'll read a novel and end up thinking the main character must be the author in disguise. How else could the author know so much about what's going on in the character's head?

But lately, I've begun to hear another question. If CARPOOL DIEM is not about me, who is it about? Often this is not even a question. People tell me. People who are sure that they know.

This is what happened several months ago while I was out walking my dog in my home town. I bumped into an old friend who was power-walking with a woman I'd never met before. My friend told her walking partner that I'd written a novel about a soccer mom. That was all her friend needed to hear. “Oh,” said the woman I'd never met before. “I know exactly who your novel is about.”

Now you have to understand that up until that moment I honestly thought I made the whole novel up. In fact I thought I'd spent hours-possibly way too many hours-thinking, planning, writing and rewriting as I attempted to bring to life my fictional heroine, Annie Fleming. What a surprise to find out I hadn't made her up at all. I was so curious to find out who she really was. “Wow!” I said. “Okay. Who is my novel about?”

The woman I'd never met before named a very nice woman who lives in our town. I've met this very nice woman. The very nice woman has a son the same age as my daughter. Our kids have gone to the same schools for many years. And I am vaguely aware that this very nice woman spent some amount of time as manager of her son's soccer team. But did I write a novel about her? Even if I had wanted to I couldn't. I don't know anything about her. You now know everything I know. Wait. There is one more thing. She's French. Okay. There. Now you know everything I know.

For a short time this encounter bothered me. How could someone who hadn't yet read my book think my novel was about a person I barely knew? But now I'm over it. Now I find it kind of fun. Because I realize that really, it's not my place to decide.

Maybe my book is a little bit about me. Maybe it's a little bit about everyone I've ever met or heard of or read about. Who knows, maybe it's even a little bit about the French woman who I know just well enough to say hello. Ultimately I can't say for sure. That's the wonderful mystery of the writing process. And just as wonderful is this: once the book is written it doesn't matter what I think. What matters is what the reader thinks. Because at the end of the book, it's always the reader who gets to decide.