I recently wrote a post about why I despise being asked if my fiction is autobiographical and what it can’t be… Because fiction is fiction.

And… as I say in that post, while all fiction writers draws from their own lives, they use those experiences as seeds for stories that do far more than a simple, navel gaze-y re-telling of their own. Yawn. Boring.

One of my goals is to help enlighten those who don’t have a clue about the difference. And so, for all you gossip mongers who think you have a right to pry into the personal lives of others…

Here’s another tantalizing real-life story seed from my life—the one that planted my short story, Just Like in the Movies.

The story centers on six-year-old Josie Jones, who learned everything she knows about love from old movies. Her favorite? Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Where did that idea come from?

My own life.

I was eleven the day my dad left.

I came home from school and found my grandma at the kitchen table. She lived next door and was always around. But that day, something was different. I could tell she was sad. When I asked her why, she told me. “Your dad… he left.”

And here’s how he did it.

He left a note. A really, really short one. I think it said something like: “I can’t be here anymore.” Period.

I remember running to my parents’ bedroom, opening his side of the closet, and seeing a row of empty hangers. That image branded itself into my mind.

Josie’s story sprouted from that image.

But that wasn’t the only piece.

Several months before he left, my dad took me shopping. We stopped at a diner for lunch, and our waitress turned out to be the woman he was having an affair with. The woman he left us for.

My dad must’ve had some really big balls. Or really tiny ones. Depends on how you want to frame it, I guess.

In Josie’s story, I borrowed more directly from my own life than I usually do. But I layered in more. Like Josie learning everything she knows about love through old movies.

That piece was pure invention—something that made the story larger than my own memories, and also took me back to my days of teaching argumentation and rhetoric (the impact of pop songs, movies, and romance novels on young girls’ beliefs about romantic love was a hot topic in those classes).

In fact, I had never seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s, so I had to watch it to to get the details right. Doing that—thinking about my own experience, and all the young women in my classes and the essays they wrote on the subject—let me explore the bittersweet way we inherit ideas of love and family that rarely match the messy truth of life.

There’s more to Josie’s story, but I’ll save that for later. (I’ll be posting it soon for paid subscribers.)

Here’s how my real-life story played out: within a year and a half, my parents divorced, my dad married the waitress, and then left her when she was eight months pregnant so he could remarry my mom. We packed up our lives in Illinois and moved to Colorado. (I guess they thought you could run away from the messes you make. Of course, they were wrong.)

And yes, there’s another twist involving that baby—my half-sister. But that story deserves its own telling.

So, here’s my question for you:

What’s one image from your own past, seared into memory, that could serve as the beginning of a fictional story?

I’d love to know…

Opens the notebook wide, leaving space for your words to land.