You're So Vain, You Probably Think This Book is About You

Dear Disgruntled Former Friends of Novelists Until You Were Betrayed,

Our book is not about you. You are not featured as a character. We didn't write about you now and we are not likely to write about you in the future. This isn't because you aren't interesting. You are!  It's the nature of writing itself that prevents a novelist from taking hold of a character (even a real life character such as yourself) and forcing that person to live inside a fiction. The fiction always wins in the end. Characters take on traits common to all human beings. Even the writer takes second place to the demands of the story which is universal or there is no point in writing it.

So take a deep breath and trust me on this. Just because you know (or did know) a novelist, it doesn't mean a thing. You are you, and a fictional character is fictional. Not real. Or as I like to think, people in novels are a reality we haven't experienced yet but are chasing after. We don't know why they attract or repel us but they do and such is the power of fiction. 

We didn't write about you. Or anyone else in Creation. We wrote about all of us. 

Sincerely,

Novelists Everywhere