the greediness of writers

So like this is really hard for me to talk about. But writers are greedy. I have a friend whom I have been out of touch with for sometime. Well we finally connected and it turns out that there have been some pretty dramatic changes happening in his life.

Let me say that I have always found this friend interesting. He was really just sort of a kid when I met him as a student in one of my classes. But when the class was over we remained friends. He was the one who taught me to shoot a gun like a Marine.

Anyway we've been in touch off and on over the years and I liked him so much that he became a character in my play The Lahontan Monologues. In the mean time he's lived a real life. And become a very interesting grown up man.

So today he tells me his story which is fasinating and which includes him winning $9,000 worth of DeWalt tools for a short story he wrote, which as one of his former writing teachers, I'm totally thrilled about. Yes he was one of a handful of very talented  students I've been blessed with. I can name them on one hand. And I've lost touch with most of them.

But I totally fail as a human being. Instead of empathizing with the pain of the situation I'm jazzed by the sizzle. He's living life to the fullest the way my perception of him as a character leads me to think he should. I'm greedy for the story and inhuman about the life.

This makes me hate myself. As a writer I love the excitment of a life fully lived by a character. As a human I suck. And the terrible thing is I want to know what he's going to do next. I'm greedy for the novel!