A Writer's Public and Private Selves

Novelists learn early in their careers to create characters and reveal aspects of personality through what the characters say, do, think, and feel. Moreover, what characters say about each other reveals as much about speaker as subject. In the creative process, novelists draw on the experiences we all share in getting to know ourselves and others. We play a variety of roles—offspring, sibling, spouse, parent, friend, lover, worker, and so on, highlighting or downplaying aspects of ourselves to fit a variety of circumstances. Each of us is multi-faceted, and when novelists translate the multi-faceted aspect of human nature to fictional characters, they bring those characters to life.

Later on in their writing careers, novelists discover that each has created a character who is not confined in a book or in a body. Beyond a novelist’s person is his or her persona. In THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A NOVEL, Jane Smiley writes that a literary persona “is equally the possession of the author and the reader; both create it and both respond to it, since it is made by the act of reading and remembering novels.” A writer’s persona begins with his or her experiences and choices of material and style; then, like a character in a novel, the persona is further shaped by readers’ expectations and reactions.

Though a person writes a book, often the persona sells it to a readership. Derek Lee Armstrong and Kam Wai Yu tell us in THE PERSONA PRINCIPLE, How to Succeed in Business with Image-Marketing: “Once your persona is born, you must develop, expand, and elaborate, until the persona can function on its own . . . Allow your persona to live independently of its creators . . . Let your personified venture grow equity in its identity that is not dependent on your personal interference.”

How does a writer reconcile person with persona? Recently, I posed that question to Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queen Book Clubs and author of THE PULPWOOD QUEEN’S TIARA-WEARING, BOOK-SHARING GUIDE TO LIFE. Asked if her public persona differs much from her private self, Kathy replies: “My public persona is much different from myself. People perceive me as this outgoing big-haired, tiara wearing girlie girl. First I don't actually have big hair . . . I clip my big hair on and call it my ‘Go to Town’ hair.” Kathy, who owns Beauty and the Book, a hair salon/bookstore, believes “the public expects me to have my hair done and be dressed a certain way in public. At home, it's hair pulled back in a ponytail, ball cap, no makeup, t-shirt and pull on pants. At work I'm a big talker because I have a lot to say about beauty and books. At home I don't talk at all because I'm either writing or I'm reading. Which persona is more me, I think I am both. I love to dress up and I love to dress down. Other times I like to dress in costumes and do theater, or story hours. I believe that we can be more than one thing in life. Some people call that schizophrenia, to me I call it my life in books.”

Truly, Kathy Patrick has found a beautiful balance between what Jane Smiley calls “a reading and writing life, and a lived life.” Kathy hosts the annual Girlfriend Weekend in East Texas, a celebration for Pulpwood Queens, readers, and writers. And while promoting literacy, Kathy is also willing to add a little color and curl to her guest authors’ personae.

Rosemary Poole-Carter