CJ Chapman asked Francesca Zappia:

Firstly, THANK YOU for Made You Up. I have a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder and I was incredibly moved by your book. I'm recommending it to everyone I know. I'm also left-handed and I loved how you made a point to have Alex notice Miles' left-handedness. How did you decide to make that a thing in the story? Are you left-handed?

Francesca Zappia Thank YOU so much! I'm so glad the book connected. Reading that really made my day!

On Miles's left-handedness--I'm not personally left-handed, no. I was writing the book around the same time that I noticed a lot of my favorite characters/actors on TV and in movies were left-handed, and I thought, "If I didn't like them, I wouldn't notice this." Miles is left-handed because he's always been left-handed, but Alex notices it because she likes him.

(Miles is also probably left-handed because I felt my left-handed friends' plight of always having lead or ink smeared on the side of their hands, and later I found it really funny how much that would disrupt Miles's neat freak tendencies.)

(Also, I think most characters' hand preference isn't recognized often enough. If you're bothering to notice which hand someone writes with, you're interested in that person in one way or another.)

flag