Ever had the experience of minding your own business and someone who looks startingly familiar walks by and in a flash, you get that it's not someone you know from work or school or childhood, but they look exactly like a character you made up in your head? That's not synchronicity, people, that's part of being an author.
I thought it was only me losing my admittedly few marbles until I spoke with other writers and discovered we've all been visited by visions of the people who inhabit our heads and eke out of our pens. It's a little creepy and intensely cool and when it happened to me, I stood like a gawk-eyed teenager star-struck by their Perfect 10.
Pic gakked from—where else?—Chord-Overstreet.com
This isn't the same thing as when you choose an actor or model to keep in mind while writing (although I recently discovered that Chord Overstreet bears a striking resemblance to Tender in LUMINOUS, but that was long after the book had been written and long before I'd ever seen the Glee heartthrob), this is an ordinary person who doesn't know you from your Biblical reference of choice gliding past your vision, blissfully unaware that they are wearing a face you've dreamed up from scratch. It's eerie and amazing. Sort of Stranger Than Fiction like come true. ((shudder)) and *Whoa!*
Note the caption in the Subject line: a birthday present from Better-Than-Boyfriend & available at CafePress!
Have YOU ever seen one of the characters in your head walking around in the real world?
