That’s Not Me: Miriam Drori

Please note: I wrote this post before a large band of terrorists infiltrated our country and commited heinous war crimes. I’m not sure I’d be able to write such a post in my current mood.

Today’s guest in the series That’s Not Me! is not a guest at all. It’s me, Miriam Drori, author, editor, blogger and much more. What do I have to say on the topic?

That’s Not Me! examines how much of our fiction is autobiographical and why some authors try to insist there’s no link between their fictional characters and themselves. If you want to take part, have a look here and get in touch. You don’t have to be a writer. Readers also have views!

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An Admission

Of all the characters I’ve written so far, the one who’s closest to me is Martin in Cultivating a Fuji. This is how I described the connection in About the Author on Amazon:

Miriam Drori was born and brought up in London at about the same time as Martin. Like Martin, she studied Maths and went on to work as a computer programmer. Like Martin, she was bullied at school and, as a result, social anxiety paid a visit and refused to leave.

There, the similarities end. Miriam also studied Music. She emigrated, married and had three children. Her career path veered onto technical writing and then took a sharp turn, landing in the field of creative writing. Now, she enjoys reading, hiking, dancing, touring and public speaking. And writing, of course.

Although most of the current and past events in the story are completely imagined, some are taken from my life. I am now going to admit, for the first time, that I did something out of spite, because, in a way, I’m still angry about the way I was treated all those years ago. What was the spiteful thing I did?

I used someone’s real name.

And while that person, if she’s still alive, will probably never know what I did, it was not very nice of me. Here’s the excerpt:

February 1962

Miss Spector surveyed the classroom. All the children were writing except for Martin. She walked over to him and in a loud voice said, “Martin, why aren’t you writing?”

Martin looked up at her. “Because I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

“There must be something you’d like to be. A doctor? An astronaut? A teacher?”

Someone said, “Martin wants to be a dustman,” and everyone laughed, including Miss Spector. Everyone except for Martin.

Martin looked down at the empty page of his exercise book.

“Well, think about it, Martin, and write your composition at home. I want to see it tomorrow.”

The next day, Miss Spector made Martin read out his composition to the class. It went:

I want to be an engineer, because an engineer works with machines and not with people. With people, you never know what they’re going to do, but machines do exactly what you tell them to do. Every time you press a button, the machine always does the same thing.

“Martin,” said Miss Spector. “How do you know about engineers?”

“My daddy told me about engineers yesterday. We talked about lots of different jobs I could do, and I chose that one.”

Someone said, “Martin said that because he doesn’t like us.”

Someone else said, “Yeah, because he’s funny and we laugh at him.”

The children laughed. Miss Spector laughed. Only Martin didn’t laugh.

I tweaked that story to better fit Martin but the essence of it is the same and Miss Spector was the teacher’s name. She was only eighteen at the time, so can be forgiven for not knowing better, but I still blame her for taking the side of the popular kids against me, and for not understanding the effect such treatment could have on a vulnerable eight-year-old.

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I don’t have to put a bio, blurb or links here, because you can find those by clicking on the headings up at the top ­.

Next week, I intend to post a summary of all the posts so far. Remember to let me know if you want to take part in this series.