Today

We saw Jonathan Friesen speak at the University of Minnesota bookstore. He's written "Jerk, California," a book about a kid with Tourette's Syndrome. Though Friesen himself suffers from Tourette's, the book is reflective of his emotions though not his personal experiences.

Hearing him speak was great. I asked him how you can keep a disadvantaged character from seeming like a victim and he said: "Make them heroic. It doesn't have to be huge, just something to plant the seed -- early -- to tell you that this is someone worth sticking with."

Then Adam asked him why he wrote the book as fiction, not memoir, and he said: "Fiction has to be truer than a memoir." He went on to say that strange things happen as part of life, and that we'll buy it because life itself is strange, but in fiction, it's got to be believable.

I bought the book.