Just came across this passage in an Atlantic Magazine article on David Simon, creator of The Wire.
As it turns out my latest fiction project is being driven by my real-life nemesis--right now with mixed results. I'm focusing so much on the rich details that make him my nemesis, that I'm missing those essential details that make him human. Anyone else working with a real life nemesis? And if so, how do you keep it real, in that no one is as much a monster as our grudges may make them out to be.
In a session before a live audience in Baltimore last April, for a local storytelling series called The Stoop, Simon was asked to speak on a topic labeled “My Nemesis.” He began by reciting, by name, some of the people he holds grudges against, going all the way back to grade school. He was being humorous, and the audience was laughing, but anyone who knows him knows that his monologue was, like his fiction, slightly overstated for effect, but basically the truth.
“I keep these names, I treasure them,” he said.
As it turns out my latest fiction project is being driven by my real-life nemesis--right now with mixed results. I'm focusing so much on the rich details that make him my nemesis, that I'm missing those essential details that make him human. Anyone else working with a real life nemesis? And if so, how do you keep it real, in that no one is as much a monster as our grudges may make them out to be.