unintended allegory

today i started writing a lot, after a few weeks of litle progress. but then i was stopped by a horrible realization:

everyone is going to think my book is about the war in Iraq.

specifically, my book could easily be interpreted as an attack on bush's foreign policy. i cane up wth the basic plot for this book before Bush came into office, and although i was writing during the Iraq war, i wasn't conscious of imitating it.

i don't want people to perceive my book as political. i want it to apeal to all readers: if i lose republicans, that hurts my potential audience.

questions:

did i subconsciously write it about the Iraq war?

will anyone notice?

if so, will they care?

what can i do about it?

My suggestion would be to finish the story. Don't let it cripple you. Reach the end. It will be much easier to decide if it is too allegorical once you have it on paper. Then you can address the issue in rewrites.

Jen

did i subconsciously write it about the Iraq war?

Click to expand...

Dunno. It's possible I suppose but I doubt it.

will anyone notice?

Click to expand...

I somehow doubt that too; perhaps decades from now, when scholars are dissecting it and examing the entrails to amaze and confound their students.

if so, will they care?

Click to expand...

By now, you may be unsurprised at my answer: I doubt it. Most readers read fantasy to escape into a world of wonders unlike their own; not to sift it for allegorical references to current events.

what can i do about it?

Click to expand...

Fahgeddaboutit. Don't lose a wink of sleep over it and just continue writing the book. It's normal for an author, particularly a newish one, to be given to intensive navel-gazing. But trust me, the average reader doesn't care or speculate about what the writer might have meant. They only want to be engaged and transported by a good story.

Everything Frank said.

thanks

thanks everyone. i thought about it, and by the time this is published it probably won't matter anymore

Re: thanks

I've been thinking about it and even if the time weren't involved, as long as you are not promulgating the concept that it was ok to bomb the world trade center, any other opinion, at least in the U.S., is acceptable.