if you write about writers, who will write about you?

Today in my Intro to Fiction class, we discussed The Hours by Michael Cunningham, where he fictionalizes a part of Virginia Woolf's life. This brought on a meta discussion about the morality (as well as other literary problems) involved in writing fiction about a real person's life. Why would you choose to do this? How accurate does it need to be? Are there problems in presuming their thoughts and feelings; what kind of liberties are taken?

Questions that also struck me that I hope to bring up next class (or privately with the professor): Is there a difference between writing a fictional account of a historical (i.e., dead) figure and someone who is currently alive? What kind of permission do you have to seek? Is there a certain length of time that needs to pass before the person's life becomes public property much in the way literature copyrights expire?

Then there's the entire idea of writing fiction about fictional characters. I would love her opinion on this. They call it "derivative fiction" when they can get it published, all those awful works based off Pride and Prejudice (Mr. Darcy's Diary, Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, etc.; what is this crap?) or The Wizard of Oz (oh Wicked). How legitimate is this? How are the morals involved here different from writing about real people (historical or present)?

I have no problem with any of this. Honestly, the thing about writing is that no one can stop you from writing whatever you want. The only thing people can restrict is the distribution of your writing--they can say who can or cannot read your writing, but they can't stop you from writing it.

So write it.

for all time, you are my everything

You're the breath of life in me
the only one that sets me free

Spring Break ends today and it's back to classes and routine (nose to grindstone) again tomorrow. I know I'll be able to readjust fairly quickly, but right now it's so hard to want to face everything again, when the past week has been so full of lovely things like sleep, Chinese food, writing, random drinks with A, time. Life goes on, though, and we move with it. I'm just in a vaguely nostalgic, vaguely pensive mood, one that borders on unhappiness (except I wouldn't go that far). It, too, shall pass.

I'm listening to this song on repeat. It's a pretty good rip of a fancam from a concert featuring D (a Korean star) singing 98 Degrees' My Everything. His English is coherent, clear, understandable, and the entire performance moved me to tears when I first watched it. This song is a tribute to his late father, apparently with images playing in a slideshow behind him as he sang. The very concept is touching, but to hear him sing it is just so much more-- It kind of breaks my heart.

in memory, we emerge from the fear and the tears

It was Eve.

It wasn't just anyone, it was Eve.

Eve Carson was our student body president this year and yesterday morning around 5am, a 911 call alerted the police to her body at a community not far off campus. She was lying in the intersection, shot. She was identified this morning at the hospital and her name was released to the public at 12:30 this afternoon at a press conference.

No one knows if it was a random incident or if she was targeted. All we know right now is that she was murdered.

I didn't even know Eve. I've never met her. But I've passed h on campus, I've seen her picture in our campus newspaper; I knew people who knew her, I knew her policies and her friendliness through other people. She was real to me, to the entire campus and city of Chapel Hill.

This time, the shooting victim wasn't just a twenty-something college female. This time it was Eve--Eve, who was someone to everyone. Her death doesn't just affect her family and her friends and the people who knew her. Her death affects the entire UNC campus and the city of Chapel Hill because she was such a public figure, so engaged.

This is the closest death has ever struck for me and it's terrifying. It's incomprehensible and unfair and random and frightening. In the March (again, March) of my freshman year, a crazed graduate student drove his car across the most crowded area of campus during lunchtime and hit five or six people. About nine people were injured but hundreds were left shaking, afraid. Sarah was almost hit that day. She was terrified; I was terrified--but no one died then.

This brings home to me how truly tragic the shooting last April at Virginia Tech must have been. Multiple this feeling of shock, loss, fear by thirty-three.

For me, just one--just this one--is enough to bring tears to my eyes.

It was Eve.