Silencing the Inner Censor
Battles with the self in writing fiction
Despite living for the last 22 years in Australia, I’m indisputably English. There are times I wish I were a little less so, but there we have it.
Among other things, this means I like my private life to stay private. That can be a challenge for someone who has chosen writing as a profession.
To be honest, it’s not sooo much of a problem for an author of English courses for German and Austrian secondary schools, my ‘day job’ niche under my real name.
My personal contribution there, the fingerprint of my interests and values, would only be discernible to someone who knows me very well: it lies in the choice of texts and other ‘inputs’, the tasks to facilitate comprehension and discussion, the occasional flights of creative fancy my editors and advisors let me get away with.
But it’s very much an issue for a fiction author, I’ve been surprised to discover.
Let’s (not) get it on
I’ve written recently about the ‘truth’ of fiction. How writing good, challenging fiction requires the author to not only utilise every scrap of empathy, every nugget of lived experience they possess, but also to excavate their inner life.
