When writing a story the hardest part for me is a character's back story. Why? Because I am not an insider to American or, in the grand scheme of things, to the Western culture.

When I was growing up, from an early age I was spoonfed with the ideals of communism and the practice of socialism. I was a member of all kinds of young communist leagues starting from the age of 7 and on. I was supposed to read and be fairly familiar with the important works of Marx and Lenin and what has happened on different congresses of the Soviet Communist Party. I was supposed to condemn the evil influence of decaying capitalism and great the confident gait of the most progressive societal formation that gave me such a happy childhood.

Fast-forwarding to today, when I finally have some spare time to write, I find myself an outsider to the culture where I live. By that, I don't mean I don't watch movies or TV shows, isolated from taxes and bills.

But I don't know what makes the western person tick. I can't travel to his childhood and understand, in which way has he or she been brainwashed, what they have been spoonfed, how the world was opening up to them.

You might say...well why don't you write about your childhood and your country? Ah... because Americans are not interested. Well not completely. But there are only certain roles that a foreigner can assume in the American fictional universe. It could be either a person who has suffered from communism and who looks up for the Western world as a panacea. It could be a comic relief character who speaks in broken English and does silly things. Or it could be a spy or a gangster.

I recall reading the novel of a German writer Erich Maria Remarque by the name of "Shadows in Paradise" about german antifascists who escapes Nazi Germany and ran to America. One of these people worked at the movie studio and had to play Nazies. He despised this role but was said by the director that he's still would make a better nazi than an American actor would. )

The protagonist by default could only be an American. That's why I love "finish the story" contests so much, where the backstory is already taken care of by the first writer and it is so easy to fake your insider knowledge.