Tackling the tough stuff

I was telling someone about my crime writing the other day and it made me sound a right ghoul, reflecting on horrible themes as I do.

However, the more I thought about it the more I realised that all writers need to tackle the tough subjects.

Emotion is something of which some writers are wary, preferring to produce work without revealing too much of themselves or embracing difficult subjects. Perhaps it all becomes too personal.

However, for many other writers, there cannot be fiction without a sense of themselves in it. For some authors, there is always part of them peering through, their fears, their hopes, their aspirations, their unique take on life.

They may not say ‘and this is me’ but it is there all the same in their writing. For many authors, writing has to be a deeply personal art.

Of course, it is not all autobiographical - many writers write characters and scenes which readers find abhorrent and use language and ideas with which readers might not agree but which need to be there because they reflect the world about us.

However, in there somewhere are also tantalising glimpses of what the writer really thinks of the world.

John Dean