But I end with a man who is waiting for his lover, who scans the room every few seconds in search of a face he knows and who reads every entertainment article he can find in search of her name. She went to Hollywood a few weeks ago, you know. She'll make it. But today she's coming home to him. Sure she is.
Real people are sometimes the seeds for characters, but they are never the templates.
I'll venture to say that's the same for most writers. That's a hyperbole, certainly, but it makes a nice tag line. In all seriousness, writing demands an attention to detail, an exclusive concentration that can become otherworldly and ultimately devastating. The myth of the writer as some sort of withdrawn, absent-minded dreamer may be an exaggeration, but it is based on the absolutism of the craft. To choose to inflict the sort of torment writing can be indicates some level of loose wiring.