Writers and their work

I'll be the first to tell you that seeing how and what a person writes is an excellent way to learn more about them. It's another reason that I like doing roleplays. It's a great way to get to know a person, what kinds of things they value, what their favorite traits of themselves are. This is all because, as a writer, we put ourselves into our work, whether we realize it or not. Everything we write is based on our personal experiences. It's one of the great things about being a writer - there is literally nothing you can do in your life that will not be relevant.

That being said, you shouldn't assume too much about a writer because of their writings. I know that's counterintuitive to what I just said, but hear me out.

Have you ever read or heard about old laws or beliefs? They seem completely foreign to us, incomprehensible, but that's just how that world was. Things change, and we understand how things are in the here and now, but tomorrow and yesterday are strange to us. They don't make any sense. An author will sometimes put themselves in that place. Their not dealing by our rules anymore. They're dealing with an entirely new set of rules, and sometimes to us that can seem really messed up. But that doesn't mean that the author is messed up.

Take, for example, the Joker. He is one messed up character. In fact, everyone in Gotham is. But do we assume that the people who made those characters are as messed up as they are? I wouldn't, and I certainly would hope that you wouldn't either. Sometimes, to make an interesting story or world, we have to make really messed up people. I know I certainly have. I've written characters that, if they existed in the real world, would immediately be sent to either prison or an insane asylum. And sometimes, those are the good guys.

I'm not saying that these things don't come from the author. They do, somewhere, somehow. But that doesn't necessarily make it part of them. It could be someone else they've encountered or heard about somewhere down the line. It might be from a nightmare they had as a child. It might even be something they ripped off entirely from another story you've never heard of.

The point is, don't judge a writer by they're strangest work. Judge them by what they write normally, repeatedly, and well. If that's something creepy and weird, then sure, whatever. Maybe they're a really messed up person. But maybe they've just been in a dark place for a long time, and they don't want to be there either. A person's story is a great insight into who they are. But it's only an insight into that singular moment when they were writing it. Sure, writing takes a while, but it's only a small portion of a huge life that they are living.

Even just going through this little bit of writing I've done here, you can see a person who changes and evolves everyday. The things I see and do influence me. It's all a part of me, but it's a part of a growing person, someone who's still figuring it out. It's a really cool thing that we can see, and we can read into it, just not too far. No one wants to be remembered for a single instance of something they did wrong. They want to be remembered for an entire existence of things they did, right and wrong, and how they adapted to that afterwards. So writing is a great way of learning. But it's not a good place to stop.