The Implied Author Part II: The Virtual Audience

From the Cormorant Books blog. The second installment in a series of original posts by Silver Salts author Mark Blagrave, recording his thoughts and reflections on the experience of being a new novelist in the 21st century.

Meeting the Relatives (aka You Can't Libel the Dead)

Most writers have friends who regularly beg them not to write about them.

The pleading is usually a mixture of I-dare-you and would-I-ever-love-that. When you are a playwright, you’re lucky to get through a dinner party or staff meeting without someone exclaiming about some particularly smart line or outrageous behaviour: "You should put that in your next play." I always smile and nod. Sometimes, if I am feeling crusty, I mutter “nobody would believe it.” I never use the material. I just haven’t ever worked that way. I don’t keep a journal where I record slices of life for later use. I don’t (knowingly) base characters on actual people I know. Probably that means there’s something wrong with me — some kind of fear of intimacy issue or something, perhaps because I was bottle, and not breast, fed.

Courtesy of Cormorant Books. Keep reading Mark Blagrave's The Implied Author Part II at the Cormorant Books blog.

Click here for Part I of the series.