I'm writing a character now who lies to manipulate other people, including my narrator, to bend them to her will - but in a nice way. I have written lying characters before (see Reed in VEE, who lies to be cruel and Lucie in MEG, who lies to protect herself) but I've never written one like this.
Obviously, writers have to create characters who are nothing like themselves to populate their stories. Otherwise it would be unbelievably boring to have everyone act like one person - the author. But whenever I write someone who is so different from me, it makes me think about my own personality and if there's a part of me in there too.
I am not a liar. It never occurs to me to lie to get my way. Maybe it's the way I was raised, maybe I've seen other people get in trouble for lying. Ultimately, I do believe in karma - that whatever you put out there into the universe will come back to you in some way. I'm the kind of person who responds to email in a day, who returns every phone call, who doesn't pretend to be busier or more important than she is to make herself look smarter or more popular. If anything, I'm a glass-half-empty gal, while HH would love for me to be more glass-half-full. He wants me to be more elusive but to me that's a false note. If I'm busy, sure, that's one thing but if I'm not, why pretend to others that I am?
Sometimes in my personal life, I have a hard time understanding where people who lie are coming from. What drives them to fib about how much money they make, how busy they are, how popular their books are...I don't cut them much slack because it's something I never do.
But when I write, I can imagine all sorts of motivations for characters who lie. Interesting that I can't do that with real people.
A reminder: Teen Free Book Fridays is featuring me as their author this week and will be giving away 2 signed copies of my books, one each of LOVE, MEG and ALL ABOUT VEE. So head on over and sign up to win!
