When Writers Write About Themselves
I’ve watched a couple of episodes lately that made me wonder about what happens in our brains when we writers write about ourselves. I don’t mean ourselves individually; I mean ourselves as a collective, or an idea, or an idea of particular character.
On an episode of Law & Order: SVU, for example, there was a writer character who had papered his walls with his rejection letters, kept his books in a perfect area with a dehumidifier thing, and had started a serial killing spree of copying a famous serial killer because one of the rejection letters had told him the serial killer subject of his book was too old. They wanted something more recent. The writer wanted to be known. He wanted to be famous. So he became the serial killer he had written about.
Maybe he wasn’t really a writer. I mean, he was a writer. He wrote books, according to the story line, but he wrote books to be known, not necessarily to because he liked writing. Or else that part of him had been killed off by his insanity. Anyway, when I was watching that episode, it made me wonder about the writers on the show. Had they been laughing at themselves when they wrote it? Poking fun at themselves and other writers? It was just a thought.
Then, tonight on Bones, the body found had been a science fiction writer with OCD. After his first two books, his publisher had cut him off because he, the writer, was not marketable enough. They had hired someone as a stand in for the photo and had written a totally fictional blurb about the writer. The editor that Bones interviewed about it was so despicable she was ready to throw away the books she was writing cuz she didn’t want to be seen through the jaded eyes of this publisher. Again, I wondered about the people who had written the episode. Were they making fun of writers? Publishers? Editors? All of the above?
What happens when writers write about themselves?
