This article was previously published on Medium!

It’s probably a bit weird to take life tips from a character you created yourself, but hey, I’m a writer, and we all know how weird they are. Besides, my characters are real to me. I talk to them every day, play their scenes like movies in my head at night, and yes, I take life advice from them. Why? Because they’re the best friends I never had and they’re right.  

Let’s jump back to the beginning.

Back to me, aged twelve: painfully shy, chubby; always the odd one out, at home, at school, or even just walking down the street. I was already addicted to writing and much preferred it to real life. Every day I’d run home from school, dash up to my bedroom, put on my favourite music and start writing.

At aged twelve, I had this one story I was totally obsessed with.

You know what it’s like when you’re a kid of that age and you really fall in love with a band? Or a song? Or an actor on TV? You obsess over them, paste their posters to your bedroom wall, watch everything they’re in or buy every album they release? They’re all you can think about?

Well, that was me and this story.

And I was kind of ashamed of it. My family and friends knew I loved writing and some of them vaguely knew what sort of stuff I was working on, but the gist of it, the details and, more importantly, the characters, were all mine. I felt very protective of them, like they were my guilty secret. The extent of my obsession was embarrassing to me.

I wrote the story aged twelve and it was the longest story I’d written so far. It was hand-written at the first, scribbled onto lined notepaper and held in a ring-binder folder. I showed it to my English teacher at school and got a merit certificate in assembly. I was very, very proud of it. When I saved up and bought my electric typewriter, I painstakingly rewrote it again and printed it out.

Oh boy, did I feel like a real author then!

I rewrote that book again and again. I just couldn’t leave it alone. I’d start other stories, sometimes very similar ones, but I’d always go back to that one. Every night I’d watch my characters in my head, listen to them talk and come up with more scenes. I did a big rewrite aged sixteen and another aged nineteen and finally, when I was in my thirties, I realised time was running out and I needed to get it done.

I rewrote it again, published it and before I knew it, it had grown into a five-book series which now has a spin-off book on the way. The series is also part of a bigger universe of inter-connected books.

So, you can probably see by now how obsessed I was with these characters and this story.

I guess, as a lonely, awkward, introverted weirdo of a kid, I found a way to belong. I built my own world and filled it with friends.

Anyway, on to the life advice.

There is a scene in the first book where my main character, Danny, is feeling defeated and negative. It’s partly because of his home-life and it’s partly because he and his friends have been stereotyped as bad kids and troublemakers in their town. Because of this, when he and best friend Michael try to secure lawn-mowing work to make their home-lives easier, they are refused by everyone they ask.

Both boys have a rough time at home. Both struggle at school. Both are obsessed with the music of the time. (Early nineties.) They are the best of friends and throughout the series they go through some incredibly difficult, scary and dark times together.

Through it all, Michael is always the positive one. The optimist. Danny suffers from darker thoughts and is drawn to self-destruction.

When complaining about his life, his family, and the posh people in town who won’t let them cut their lawns, Danny is at a very low ebb. He is feeling miserable and thwarted by everything.

Michael teases him, laughs at him and tells him to stop complaining.

‘Prove them wrong,’ he says.

Three simple words but they have stuck with me ever since. Three simple words that I wish someone had said to me when I was a confused and troubled teenager. Three simple words I put into the mouth of a fictional character created in my own mind. Three words I live by every day.

Prove them wrong.

In many ways, those three words form the main theme of the books. I didn’t know that at the time, aged twelve. They were just the type of words that Michael would say to cheer Danny up. But throughout the books, Michael stays true to his advice and refuses to give up on Danny until he believes it too. If they think you’re a troublemaker, he says to Danny, prove them wrong. If your mother thinks you are stupid, prove her wrong. If this town thinks you will never amount to anything, prove the whole damn place wrong. 

Prove them wrong. I think about those words all the time. Its not about revenge or holding grudges, it’s about holding your head up high and sticking to your values, your beliefs and your dreams.

When I was a kid, people tried to talk me out of being a writer. People laughed at me, ridiculed me and didn’t believe in me. I was an extremely sensitive child and by the time I entered my twenties, I had given up on writing. My dreams had been eroded by real life and the pressure to be sensible and get a real job.

I didn’t allow myself to think much about writing, but every time I did, I felt so sad and hollow inside, like a chunk of what made me who I was had been clawed out.

It took a while, but Michael’s words, his advice, eventually won me over. He was right all along, after all. When people think badly of you, look down on you, judge you or laugh at you, the very best thing you can do is prove them wrong.

Do it anyway.

Do it for you, so that you can smile when you think of the thing that you love, the thing that defines you, the thing you would always rather be doing, the thing that makes you, you.

Do it anyway and prove them wrong.

Throughout my life that has been the perfect mantra for a misfit like me.

Thanks for reading! If you are interested in Michael’s advice and the story behind it, here is a link to the first book in the series. Please note that I am currently revamping this series and adding fresh front matter to the books with a suggested reading order for the connected books in this universe. That should not impact your enjoyment should you read them now though!

https://amzn.eu/d/cYlh2AQ: The Best Life Advice I Ever Had Came From A Character I Created: Prove Them Wrong, A Mantra For Misfits