"What Ifs" and Control in Writing and Life

     One of the difficult things about writing, at least for me, is how much of myself I put into my characters. That's not to say that all my characters are the same, although undoubtedly they have some commonality. Rather my characters are expansions on aspects of myself. Or even a sort of experiment on an emotion that I experienced but didn't dwell on. They're "what ifs".  What if I had a different background? What if my temperament was completely different? What if I was someone else?

    Now obviously, you have to build on the foundation of that "what if" concept and by the time you're finished you'll hopefully have a decent character. It's a rather interesting and often surprisingly introspective exercise in imagination. The dangerous part is how vulnerable it makes you feel. Not only are your characters your brain children, they're reflections of yourself. You love them and you want other people to love them and see them as you do, but what if they don't? What if they reject them? Reject you? What if your characters are flat or bland or just unequivocally awful? What if you're awful? Writing is fraught with what ifs. 

    But then so is life, and life is inherently more messy. A story is largely under the control of its author, and even when the characters go completely off the rails, the writer is able to take a step back to consider the possibility of this new development for however long they want, sometimes abandoning a story entirely if it ends up being unworkable to them.

    Life does not provide that luxury. Sometimes it doesn't even provide time for introspection or rumination. Life is messy, largely because the control we have over it is superficial at best. We can control our environment to a point, but the more people in that environment, the less control we have, and that's not even taking into account external factors like medical conditions, the economy or wars.  Really, the only true control we have is over our behavior. But it's usually easier to try and control everything else than to consider the implications of that fact and then act accordingly.