Garage Door Novelist

“I have always wanted to write, about garage doors” she said. “I’ve always envied any author, even of those cheap romantic novels, for their ability to imagine a story, no matter how simple, and lay it down on paper, or these days on a computer screen. I never much thought I would be capable of it myself until now. One day I just had to write. So I sat down at my computer and I wrote for ten days straight. That was the essence of my novel, the fine-tuning was longer.”
The camera swings from a full face on her to the host.
“The emotions you describe in your book are so true to life, so vivid, they must have been felt. Are they your emotions? Is this your story?”
A second camera zooms in on Antonia. Imperceptibly she stiffens.
“Why is it that when a book is very emotional, or ‘true to life’, people automatically assume it is necessarily based on real experience? Authors imagine things, create characters, weave events, write a special history. They create their own unique world which they share with their readers. Some write from life, certainly, but not always and not everyone.”
“You haven’t answered my question Ms. Lawrence. Is this your story?”
 Susannah West drilled the question in short clipped syllables, pausing between each word of the last sentence. Antonia could practically see the underscore on the page. Her host’s perfectly proportioned face, almost to blandness saved by the strange sea-green eyes, showed no emotion, just determination. She was out to get an answer.
“No it is not’’ said Antonia unblinkingly, staring straight into the camera rather than at Susannah West. "I'ts about garage doors."

She was lying through her teeth, and only one reader, if he read the book, would really know. She forgave herself this little professional fib on network television. She was sure others had done the same before. She took care to look relaxed. She hoped the tension she felt wouldn’t show around her eyes, adding lines to the wrinkles that were starting to appear.
 “Then you are certainly a very powerful author Ms. Lawrence. Your description of pain is a case in point. Let me quote from your book:
The pain was a like a black hole in her chest. A black hole that sucked everything out of her until there was nothing left. When all trace of feeling was gone, when emptiness seemed almost comfortable, the pain came back, not from the heart where the black hole was, but from her toes, welling up inside of her and overwhelming her in an unstoppable tidal wave of emotion, roiling and hurling her about, sapping her strength, shaking her, and spilling out of her in racking sobs and unchecked tears, leaving her limp and lifeless, curled up in a ball in the corner of the room. Then nothing. No more racking, no more sobs. Just the black hole. Just the empty black hole until the next tidal wave.
That’s pretty powerful pain Ms. Lawrence, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. But that’s what my story is about; pain. It seems powerful to you and to the readers because today we don’t experience pain in the same way. 150 years ago this would have been viewed as commonplace. Passions were exacerbated then by the social and moral restrictions that were present. Everyone knows that the forbidden fruit is sweeter. Today very few things are forbidden. Back then pain was experienced, lived, overcome one way or another, sublimation or suicide, not deadened with analgesics, anti-depressants, sleeping tablets. I’ve just described normal human pain. It’s not exaggerated, it’s simply unfettered”.