This deserves a novel. Or it's the beginning of a novel: "But I don't think you ever forget that queasy feeling of realizing that the true story you're in the midst of telling is actually, probably, a hoax. That you're a patsy in an extremely low-stakes, decades-long con and that, within one second of this realization, you've just switched from reporter, monologist, or non-fiction writer to...what's a nicer word for "liar"? Fabulist? Raconteur?"
Oh man, I'm glad you think so, and thanks so much. I think your observation is especially apt because that feeling probably isn't so remote from what a novelist, screenwriter, or other fiction writer feels at some stage in the process. Like, before the work starts to live on its own, and still feels like a con, hoax, or sketchy yarn, and the writer feels somewhere between liar and novelist.
This deserves a novel. Or it's the beginning of a novel: "But I don't think you ever forget that queasy feeling of realizing that the true story you're in the midst of telling is actually, probably, a hoax. That you're a patsy in an extremely low-stakes, decades-long con and that, within one second of this realization, you've just switched from reporter, monologist, or non-fiction writer to...what's a nicer word for "liar"? Fabulist? Raconteur?"
Oh man, I'm glad you think so, and thanks so much. I think your observation is especially apt because that feeling probably isn't so remote from what a novelist, screenwriter, or other fiction writer feels at some stage in the process. Like, before the work starts to live on its own, and still feels like a con, hoax, or sketchy yarn, and the writer feels somewhere between liar and novelist.