Been There, Done That

Another fun story from Child #2. He was telling me a couple of weeks back about when he was six. "But I thought you were three, almost four," I said. He replied, "I grew back down to three." My youngest sister did the same thing as a kid - talking about all the stuff she'd done when she was older.

We as writers do something similar. For example, I was watching Flyboys last night (James Franco used to be my movie crush), which takes place in France during WWI. One of my novels takes place in the same country three years later. But as I watched the show, I kept thinking how familiar it felt. Though I didn't live then, I've experienced that place, that time period through my story and research.

As writers (and readers) we get to be "six" before we even turn "four," or visit London in 1868, or rescue a runaway stage out West. I think that's one of the cool things about being a writer - how real our stories, our characters, our settings can become.