I have a couple of questions regarding the writer:

Is she just writing stuff on her computer, hoping that she may get something published? Or is she writing material and publishing it online, like a blog?

If it's just on her computer, is she showing it to her girlfriend? Maybe she should stop doing that.

If it's being published online where everyone can read it, including her friends and co-workers, I can definitely understand the girlfriend's anger. And it doesn't matter how much she "composites" her, everyone is still going to know it's her.

Maynard Hershon is well-liked writer whose columns appear in bicycling and motorcycle mags. He makes up characters who are generally the composite sort, but never fails to get letters from people, "I know that guy!... even when they're from the other side of the country.

My mother is a writer and has used my experiences in her books and stories. This has always bothered me. It especially irked me, though, when she made statements about what I was thinking or what I felt about certain things when I thought/felt no such way!

LW: "Isn't anything I experience fair game?"

That strikes me as kind of arrogant. If she phrased the question as "anything she experiences," it might be more accurate, and its insensitivity a little more clear.

By the way, why does the LW need to use her own life in her fiction? Superb novels and stories have been created by authors who never lived through or experienced the events they describe. Perhaps LW would like to try writing a story on something totally new to her.

Authors tend to write what they know best. It may be fictions they have been working on since early childhood, or algebra, but people tend to write things they know.

I think Fayd's questions are reasonable. I think jefe also makes good points.

What exactly is being shared? Is it that something funny she says periodically ends up uttered out of the literary mouth of an anthropomorphic spoon? Is it a character that looks like her, talks like her, lives where she lives, and has a girlfriend with the author's name? Is it a blog about life experiences (which would be hard to leave her out of), but really well anonymized?

There's a whole lot of space this could fall into, and we don't really have enough information to decide if it's the girlfriend reading into it or the writer being insensitive.

That said, if it's enough to bother the girlfriend, the question is: what's more important to you, using that material or having her stay your girlfriend. If it's the former, be honest. If it's the later, you have two choices. 1.) Just stop 2.) Talk to her and see what would make her comfortable - wait two year, no characters only quotes or funny situations played by a variety of characters over time, etc.

I disagree. One her girl friend is not unique and to be honest none of us are. Anything she writes will likely be attributed to her in some way. The human experience is not unique, sorry.

If you are a writer then anything you write will be attributed to friends and family. Unless you do stupid things like anagram the name I don't see the problem. Any of the romance novel writers are assumed to pull scenes from their own bedroom. Even when they very clearly could not have for physiological reasons. Good writing requires people to relate to it.

Some real gripes she would have would be either you very obviously link it to her description wise or she is portrayed in a very bad light.

Your GF is short, red head with green eyes.
The lead character in a steamy scene is a
diminutive vermilion haired emerald eyed goddess. She has a legit reason to feel uncomfortable.

You and her had a major serious fight. Not a do the dishes fight but along the lines of hiding or advertising your orientation to a dieing relative. If you painted her as the iron fisted harridan who forced you to prostrate yourself to alter of her beliefs. Or the flip side. The sniveling coward who remained in the shadows as our hero faced the tumult alone. That was all sorts of levels of wrong and way worse than the first example.

Otherwise it's the hazards of dating a writer.

I walter is right about this.

There's certainly a lot of "growing moments" that I cringe about now and really really would not want the "public" to know about, esp. the "PC" and personal opinion stuff.

The other stuff could be "funny" as an inside joke thingy. ("Does her boyfriend really _______ .")

Edward Albee once made a very arrogant statement that theatre has reached full blossom in his lifetime, thanks to playwrights like him, Samuel Beckett and other contemporary playwrights. Sophocles, he explains, was a primitive. Shakespeare was immature. But thanks to him and playwrights of his time (which we are only slightly past), theater has reached the peak of its greatness.

(Samuel Beckett, by the way, responded that Mr. Albee's opinions were his own, and not necessarily indicative of anyone he has mentioned.)

In college, I was instructed by a theater instructor who was anything but a fan of contemporary stuff. He directed me in Harvey (I played Dr. Sanderson), Merry Wives of Windsor (I played Slender), Oedipus Rex (I was the Chorus Leader) and The Miser (I was Harpagon).

He acquainted me Mr. Albee's statements on his own view on the subject. That in keeping with Mr. Albee's flower analogy, theater today is a wilting flower. Playwrights, he explained, once wrote about human nature. Today, they write about themselves.

So, drawing from her own experience is legitimate. And I don't know how much she's actually writing about her lover. Would other people, seeing her creations, point to her and say, "That's you"? Or does she simply recognize herself too well.

If she can't be identified by outsiders as the character in her girlfriend's writing, I would say it's no big deal. But if people reading her girlfriend's fiction immediately recognize her, I'd say she has a legitimate grievance.

Jessica Hahn found that a guy she started dating after the church scandal was taking detailed notes, and had a cover page for them called, "My Life With Jessica", or some such. He might be OK by now...
This is even a cliché on TV today: while "Castle" is assisting Beckett, he wrote another book starring "Nikki Heat", obviously patterned on Beckett. Take the lesson - leave your friends and higher off the page!