So then...

About Me

Welcome to my blog. My pen name is Eva James. I'm an aspiring writer paying the bills working as a legal secretary. Bullied by my boss in 2008, I looked for another job but the recession hit. Feeling trapped, I started this blog. Trevor Griffiths, legendary theatre, TV and film writer said at the outset, "I like the writing a lot: smart, cool, placed. If you were prepared/able to take your prick of a boss on, you'd marmelise him." I was unaware back then that it would catalogue one of the most extreme cases of workplace bullying in the UK. I've found another job, but am subject to a gagging order. I'm still blogging, of course. Just don't tell the lawyers!

Sunday, 9 November 2014

All Writing is Autobiographical





A couple of weeks ago, a lawyer accused me of being a creative writer, implying that Bullied by the Boss may be a work of fiction. 

A coincidence: the bullying started in 2008 after I managed to get a work of fiction published. I can only conclude that Howard, my boss, thought I was getting above myself. 

What I didn’t record online was what Howard initially said about my writing. He said it was easy for me to write a contemporary story and that anybody could. He said that metaphor was a ‘con’ and would send me prosy paragraphs to show that he could write better. He would read paragraphs from my novel to colleagues using comedy voices and encourage them to laugh. He would scour the internet for interviews I had done in the press and mimic them for colleagues. He made jokes about buying copies from Amazon as he alleged the book was cheaper than toilet paper.

If I got upset, I was publicly berated for taking myself too seriously. If I tried to laugh along, he made it clear that I was inviting his insidious behaviour. Seeing that nobody objected to his belittling my small literary success, he enthusiastically moved on to everything else he didn’t like about me. And there was a lot.

For a fledgling novelist, it took me years to recover my creative writing confidence.

I told myself that if I ever did write another novel, then it would be a historical novel so that nobody could again accuse of me of being lazy. I have almost finished this new novel and, until recently, I believed I had achieved what I set out to. It’s a novel from a male perspective and set in a time before I was born.

However, when I started thinking about the theme of my novel, I realised it’s about a character who becomes obsessed with revealing the truth behind distorted media coverage. In the case of my own life, of course, it’s not about the media, but it is about the bullying I went through and the lawyers who lied and distorted evidence to cover it up. So, somewhat unsurprisingly, I have written a novel about distortion and obsession.

And this makes sense. Those with real experience of writing often say that all writing is autobiographical to one degree or another.

Perhaps we can forgive what happens to us, but to forget we have to have some acknowledgement of what we went through by the people who put us through it. In the meantime, I suspect that there may be a number of future novels on the horizon where I find my preoccupation with truth coming to the fore.
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