I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.   ~James Joyce

I grinned at this quote. Do you remember in English Lit class when the teacher spent days dissecting a novel on what the author really meant between the lines? What were the hidden meanings? What was the symbolism? What metaphors spoke to the issues of the time?

Even as a fifteen-year-old tenth grader, I found it audacious and pretentious of a school teacher to claim to understand what a creative mind thought when alone at a table penning a tale. And when a teacher deemed a student off-the-mark in their interpretation, well, the less I thought of the teacher.

Who knows what an author meant but the author?

Of course some stories are clear in their intentions, such as Orwell’s 1984 or his satirical allegorical novella Animal Farm. His intentions were in-your-face and purposeful. Others, however, are just telling a deeply felt story.

I once attended a book club where they discussed Murder on Edisto, the first in the Edisto Island Mysteries, and an outspoken member announced that she really appreciated how I was able to depict an alcoholic, and she appreciated that I must have drawn upon my personal experience with someone in my family. She even offered her condolences, saying it was noble of me to let that out in my writing.

I have no alcoholics in my family. I just did research. I thought my protagonist needed more on her plate than just solving crime so I threw that in. Not to belittle the condition, I was just piling on the strife for this character. Alcoholism was not supposed to be a secondary character in the story as this club member proclaimed. However, I thanked her, and she thanked me for the manner in which I addressed the affliction.

People will overthink your writing. Let them. A lot of the world envisions writers as those willing to dig deeper into themselves than the average person, and then spill that raw, insightful discovery onto the page as if willing to appear naked to the world. Readers adore feeling akin to the author in that regard. When your words gain sympathy, empathy, or strong emotion, you’ve written well.

The bottom line is to make your characters real, then let the reader decide what you meant. Let them feel grand because they got into your head and figured you out. Or made your world theirs.