Which came first, the heroine or the writer?

I'm slightly less grumpy this week thanks to listening to Jack Dee's "Thanks For Nothing" which had me laughing out loud (so now the neighbours probably think I'm as barking mad as the dogs for seemingly laughing to myself ;-)

Or it could just be that I'm less grumpy by comparison to Jack...

Anyway, the question I'm turning over in my mind is whether my heroine is channeling some of my inner stroppiness or if I'm in fact channeling her? A chicken and egg literary question if you like?

I'm sure it's possible to create characters who contain nothing of ourselves in them but I've had a few heroines who've had elements of me in them, or of the me I'd like to be, and I'm sure I can't be the only one.

In my current WIP my heroine is spiky and sarky to the hero, mostly to cover up the fact that she feels incredibly threatened by his presence. I'm not sure I felt threatened by anyone when I returned to Richmond to complete the neuro-psych tests last week though, just sick and knackered but boy did the sarcastic responses keep flowing from my mouth!

When asked for the umpteenth time "What [randomly unrelated word] goes with clown?"

I narrowly avoided responding "I don't know and I don't actually give one, now let me go home to bed."

As a reward for such self restraint and given it's a bank holiday here in the UK I'm going back to bed with Jack ;-)

So, do your heroines ever influence you???