Real Talk: The Mirror We Write With

I once judged a woman for rolling her eyes at the barista when her oat milk latte wasn’t hot enough. Qué ridícula, I thought, watching her storm off in her tailored jacket and crisis-level attitude. “People like her are what’s wrong with the world,” I mumbled under my breath, clutching my coffee like some kind of moral victory. Fifteen minutes later, I was flipping off a driver who didn’t let me merge.

You laugh. I laughed, too, once I realized that her impatience had been a reflection of mine, just dressed up in a different outfit. How quickly we become critics of the very things we’re guilty of, how the qualities we despise in others are often tangled up in our insecurities. And, more importantly for us writers, how our characters become the best (or worst) evidence of that messy little truth.

Because here’s the thing: we don’t write about others. We write about ourselves. Over and over and over again. We dress it up as fiction. We call it imagination. But it’s confession, Gabriel-style. Sometimes whispered. Sometimes screamed through plot twists. Sometimes muttered through a broken protagonist.

When I wrote Obsessed, I thought I was building a character. A woman with a cynical view of the world, who assumes the worst in everyone she meets. Someone whose inner monologue is a steady drizzle of suspicion, sarcasm, and bitterness. She doesn’t trust joy. She doesn’t believe in people. She walks into a room scanning for betrayal before a single hello has been exchanged.

I told myself she was just a story.

But she wasn’t.

She was me, on a Tuesday morning, pre-coffee. Or me, scrolling through social media with that sinking sense of inadequacy. Or me, re-reading a friend’s text and wondering if there was some hidden insult tucked in the emoji. And I realized something: the more I judged her, the more I was judging the parts of myself I hadn’t made peace with. When we glare at the flaws in others, we’re often staring directly into a mirror. We hate what we recognize. We hate that we recognize it.

Writers are professional judges, aren’t we? We judge characters, motives, arcs. We pick apart sentences like surgeons. We kill our darlings with poetic precision. But beneath that, we’re also judging ourselves every time we write. Sometimes I write an arrogant character and spend three pages trying to redeem them, because I know what it feels like to want to be liked despite your ego. Sometimes I write someone passive-aggressive and can’t decide if I want them forgiven or slapped, because I’ve been on both ends of that whispering cruelty.

It’s funny, people often ask me how I come up with my characters. I just put my worst traits in a blender and hit “purée.”

There was a night I’ll never forget. Not because it was dramatic, but because it was so small, so human, it almost didn’t register. I was having dinner with a group of writers. Someone made a joke about “those Instagram poets,” and everyone laughed, myself included. It felt safe to laugh, like we were in the Real Writers Club, above hashtags and filters. But on the drive home, something gnawed at me. I used to write poetry like that. Hell, I still do sometimes. Quiet, earnest things about heartbreak or late-night hunger or childhood memories I’m not sure are even real. So why had I laughed?

Because I was judging myself. Because I was insecure. Because I needed to feel superior to a version of me that I still hadn’t forgiven. And maybe that’s all judgment is: the ghost of a self we’re still ashamed of.

I’m starting to think writing fiction is just a long, elaborate ritual of self-forgiveness. We build characters we hate so we can understand them. We point out their flaws so we can examine our own without flinching. We walk them through the fire so we don’t have to keep reliving it. Obsessed was that for me. A way to sit with my paranoia, my low-grade bitterness, my need to control the narrative before it hurt me. It was therapy, but cheaper, and with better prose.

It also reminded me that our characters don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re shaped by what we notice, and what we see is shaped by what we fear, or love, or regret.

This is where self-awareness comes in. (You remember that article, right? Why Self-Awareness Is the Real Plot Twist You Need.) I wrote then about how self-awareness is a damn jump scare. It’s the moment you realize the monster is you. Or at least, your reflection. Judgment works the same way. It sneaks in like a metaphor, subtle but sharp. You think you’re writing about them, but every line is a confession. Do you think the narrator is mocking someone else? Probably mocking a version of you. That villain? He says the quiet parts of your ego out loud. That side character you keep killing off because he is “annoying”? Maybe he reminds you of your high school self.

Or your mom.

Don’t get me started.

We love to pretend that writing is therapeutic. And sure, sometimes it is. But more often, it’s confrontation. It’s that moment where you write something awful and then realize, wait… I believe this. Or worse, I’ve done this. Judgment, then, is not the enemy. It’s the clue. It’s the sticky note on your laptop that says, “Look here. This matters.” Suppose you hate your character for being a hypocrite. Good. You’re paying attention. Now ask yourself why.

I’m still judging people. Let’s not pretend I’ve ascended to sainthood. I judged a guy this morning for jogging shirtless while it was still cold. (Why are you flexing on us before 8 a.m., Chad?) But I caught myself this time. Not before the judgment, but after. And that’s the trick. Not to stop judging, but to notice when you do, and then ask what part of you you’re reacting to. As a writer, this has changed everything. My characters are fuller now. Less cardboard, more contradiction. My stories are more honest. And if I’m being real, my writing is less about proving I’m clever and more about proving I’m trying.

Trying to understand people.

Trying to understand myself.

Trying, above all, to tell the truth.

Even when it’s ugly.

Especially then.

So the next time you find yourself hating a character, or a stranger, or an Instagram poet, pause. Take a breath. And remember: the page is just a mirror. And some days, the reflection is an obstreperous little shit with a serious chip on his shoulder. But he’s also you. And maybe that’s the most honest thing you’ll ever write.