{"id":3142,"date":"2017-08-22T16:20:37","date_gmt":"2017-08-22T16:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spiffingwebsites.com\/douglas-watkinson\/?p=3142"},"modified":"2022-08-15T16:24:58","modified_gmt":"2022-08-15T16:24:58","slug":"exploiting-my-nearest-and-dearest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/post\/exploiting-my-nearest-and-dearest\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploiting my nearest and dearest…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t tell you how difficult it is to write about people you know! I don\u2019t mean the cannon fodder (in writing terms!) you meet in passing, or even people you see every day and would say you knew \u2026 reasonably well. They\u2019re dead easy to draw without a shred of conscience and sometimes they prefer the picture you present of them to the one they actually are! I murdered a neighbour, pretty gruesomely by cutting him in half lengthways with a bench saw, in one of the Nathan Hawk books and the guy loved it. He even loved the fact that after his death his wife went off with a man they\u2019d both known for years.
\nWhat isn\u2019t so easy is writing about people you know really, really well, maybe too well. Like family. I\u2019m doing it right now but as I try to get them down on paper they seem to change, partly to fit the story, but also in essence. Consequently I\u2019ve ended up with a disconcerting group of characters that, at some points in the story (still entitled The Fire Pit, though that\u2019s going to change) I simply don\u2019t recognise. They\u2019ve emerged in the parallel world I\u2019m trying to create as complete strangers. It\u2019s a spooky experience and although I\u2019m not claiming to be bonkers, I\u2019m beginning to wonder\u2026<\/p>\n

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\nAn even bigger problem comes when you use yourself, as the narrator, controlling force or just plain central character and let your imagination fly. In the last month I\u2019ve been asking myself \u201cWhere did that come from?\u201d or \u201cWould I really do anything so stupid, mean, or irrational.\u201d The answer is invariably \u201cYes!\u201d because I\u2019m trying to write a fairly \u2018true\u2019 story in which I turn over a few stones that those close to me might prefer me to leave untouched. Regardless of their wishes, as I\u2019ve gradually moved away from the person I thought I was and become the person I now am, at least according to the story, I\u2019ve had to ask: \u2018Which version of me is the true one?\u2019 That\u2019s the point at which most writers accept that the truth is one thing, but for the sake of a good story they often have to lie about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t tell you how difficult it is to write about people you know! I don\u2019t mean the cannon fodder (in writing terms!) you meet in passing, or even people you see every day and would say you knew \u2026 reasonably well. They\u2019re dead easy to draw without a shred of conscience and sometimes they…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":3143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,33,32,28,35,34,38,27,40,29,30],"class_list":["post-3142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-author","tag-crime","tag-crimefiction","tag-douglas","tag-douglaswatkinson","tag-midsomermurders","tag-police","tag-thefirepit","tag-writer","tag-writing","tag-zcars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}