Today on my virtual book tour Vanessa Gebbie performs the amazing feat of getting me to abandon my long-held principle of not talking about which bits of a story are from my own life. As readers of my blogs will know, I believe that in general such discussions about fiction are reductive and even damaging, since fiction is greater than the sum of its parts - and anyway, 'fact' and imagination are so blended in fiction that it is often difficult for the author to remember which bits are which. Worst of all, such discussions tend to encourage biographical readings of a work of fiction as a whole. However, Vanessa's questions concern the process of writing, and I have ended up dissecting the process from real-life trigger to fiction in two of the stories.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Exposed good and proper: my virtual book tour
Today on my virtual book tour Vanessa Gebbie performs the amazing feat of getting me to abandon my long-held principle of not talking about which bits of a story are from my own life. As readers of my blogs will know, I believe that in general such discussions about fiction are reductive and even damaging, since fiction is greater than the sum of its parts - and anyway, 'fact' and imagination are so blended in fiction that it is often difficult for the author to remember which bits are which. Worst of all, such discussions tend to encourage biographical readings of a work of fiction as a whole. However, Vanessa's questions concern the process of writing, and I have ended up dissecting the process from real-life trigger to fiction in two of the stories.
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