Nice to meet you, I'm a professional liar.

Nina Bawden

Writers are liars; it's an unavoidable fact. We seek to entertain our readers as much as possible, and while the truth can be stranger than fiction, it isn't always more exciting. Nina Bawden, a childhood favourite author of mine, said that 'All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people'.

Of course, this is a particularly extreme view when looking at fiction, especially fantasy writing like mine. However, even these pieces can be intended to influence readers with allusions to politics or current affairs. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings trilogy and even children's books like Tove Jansson's Comet In Moominland are examples of this, both being heavily based on their respective authors' experiences of and views on war.

To look at this from another point of view, though, the views that shape those texts are in a way the truth of the authors' own lives, and this potentially adds something to them. Cheever's short stories, like The Death Of Justina, are revealed in his journals to similarly reflect the truth of his own life and of his inner thoughts. In this review of his journals from The Guardian, Geoff Dyer points out the many themes and images in his stories which are drawn from previous journal entries.

Writers, then, seem to be a strange paradox. We are pathological liars, manipulating reality and the events our lives for entertainment, while at the same time, we cannot help baring our most private truths and our most intimate beliefs to our readers.