After hearing last year about Boris Johnson’s thriller, then about Saddam Hussein’s romance novels, I got thinking about why people from all sorts of backgrounds are drawn to writing fiction. Reading them, I’m struck by two thoughts, firstly by how easy lots of professional writers make writing fiction look, and secondly by how much you can come to understand a person by the way they write.
Are there any novels you know of from unexpected authors? Have you found any that are decent as books apart from their creators? What is it about novels that draws non-writers that’s missing from, say, pottery or interpretive dance?
One of my favorite authors, Nevil Shute Norway (1899-1960), was a British aeronautical engineer who wrote under the pseudonym, Nevil Shute, to protect his career in engineering. He was afraid his employers and co-workers would not view him as a serious person if they discovered his writing ability. I think this view has changed 180^(0) in the past 97 years since he wrote and published his first novel.