Writing about someone who really isn't me but really is me

I've been writing a story that features a character that I only recently realized was me in a different form.

Recently I reread an old post of mine and suddenly saw the words I had only recently written for this character in a year old post. I knew that I was putting a lot of me into this character but to see just how much I was projecting myself was a little scary. It's scary to think that this character is me and that anyone who reads this story will know more about me than I let most people I call friends know.

And yet I can't bare to strip myself out of the character. I don't think she would survive the operation. She is too much me that to do that would kill her. I know this because I don't hear her voice in my head. I hear her best friend's voice. I hear the snotty blonde who imagines herself to be a rival to her love's affection. But I don't hear her voice because her voice is my voice. In a way I'm writing an autobiography of things that never were but in a different time and place might have been. It's less and more challenging because my lead says what I would say in her place but she doesn't talk to me. She doesn't tell me what she is like or what she likes. It all has to come for within me.

Which sounds rather strange when you think about it. I mean the other characters who do talk to me are really just me so everything about them comes from within me too. But her details are my details making it more personal and harder to reveal. Hardly no one lives an open book but a character in a story is laid bare by the author or in this case the author is laid bare by the character.

I think I've said my piece about voices in my head and writing about myself for today.

Gilly