I am NOT a stalker!!

I want to start out by saying that I am NOT a stalker.  At least I try very hard not to be.  I am a writer. Writer's are curious creatures who sometimes forget that other people may be more private.  My life is an open book.  I'm sure that I share way more than most people are comfortable with but that is who I am and I've learned to accept it.  Half of the time I am not even sure what is going to come out of my mouth until it is already on its way out. I hate when that happens. I have to accept that I will never be mysterious or aloof.  I have tried and it doesn't work. I will always be that happy puppy who wants to jump in, be everyone's friend and learn all that I can about anyone who crosses my path. Luckily with age I have learned to tamper my enthusiasm on occasion so there are times when I seem more quiet and in control than I really am.

Being overly curious makes me genuinely interested in people and what makes them tick.  Sharing stories and life lessons is as natural to me as breathing. I feel we were all put here to learn from one another.  What better way to learn than by example or through stories? I believe that collecting stories, observing behaviors and finding what makes each person an individual is how writers develop characters.  The characters from our imagination got there somehow. We take what we know and spin it into something completely new to make it our own. My characters each have little bits and pieces of the people who have come and gone in my life over the years.

The curiosity really gets in my way when I meet someone who intrigues me.  I think my questions and sudden interest might really put people on guard.  This is when I feel like a complete stalker.  I swear I am just a married soccer mom who writes when I actually find a few minutes to myself.  With the book I am currently writing I had to awkwardly approach someone that I went to school with that I wanted to loosely base my character on.  The mystery needed an off duty police officer who was out of his own jurisdiction.  Of course when I heard that a former classmate was a homicide detective in California this seemed like the perfect scenario for my character.   I have asked all sorts of things.  Luckily he has been patient and has kindly answered the questions no matter how strange some of them might seem.  Basing a character on an actual person is hard to do because you have to learn to separate the two.  When you are in the middle of writing you sometimes get confused as you try to piece together things that will make the character fit the story that you are trying to tell. My character is not the real homicide detective, he is a figment of my imagination and can be anything I want him to be.  

Unfortunately at times I get bored with my current project and start thinking ahead to one of the others that I have outlined for future development.  Last week another former classmate piqued my interest when I happened to really look at his Facebook page.  Yes Facebook, the evil entity that shares all of our private information with complete strangers.  Of course I love Facebook and I'm not really a stranger, at least I don't see myself as one.  He may have a different opinion.   I went to grade school with this guy. We lived on the same street for two summers. I have fond memories of riding bikes and climbing trees with him.  He also gave me my first kiss on the playground in the second grade.  He may have forgotten but I have a warehouse of old memories locked away in my brain.  I can tell you silly trivia about people I grew up with but I can't remember phone numbers of people I hang out with now.  Sorry--back to the first kiss. He chased me, caught me, held me up against a tree and planted one on me.  I may have kneed him in the nuts. That is what my memory tells me happened, but it could be that I didn't start kneeing boys in the nuts until the third or fourth grade. I am not proud of that part of  my grade school history.  Anyway, to me he has always been a character in my past so of course I am going to be interested in what happened to him. To him I may be that annoying girl who lived on his street and followed him around like a puppy for two summers.  It is all in the perspective and usually we all have different perspectives on the same events.

I grew up to be a soccer mom who dreams of writing, has several partially finished projects on my computer and who writes a blog to keep myself relatively sane.  Of course I'm intrigued by a small town Washington boy who ended up in Arizona in a band and then went to Nashville?  I mean there is a story there so of course I want to know it.  Today my curiosity couldn't be contained any longer so I sent him a message on Facebook asking a thousand questions.  Okay, maybe there weren't that many, but there were a lot.  I am pretty sure he thinks I am a stalker, a band groupie or a bored housewife.  I'm just a very curious writer who wishes everyone would divulge their life stories.  Maybe my interest in history and life stories should lead me to writing biographies instead of fiction.  That is something to consider. I really need to finish something and get it published so that I can be legit and not have to defend myself when I get curious and start asking questions.  Really,  I am NOT a stalker!!