The most interesting writing-oriented thing that’s happened lately is the final edits on this bank robbery book. It’s interesting how they’ve come about. I’m ghostwriting this book for a client, where the plot is fictional but the characters and their backstory are based upon real people. We came up with this compromise as a way of solving an interesting problem: the story she really wanted to write was about herself and her friends as teens; however, she didn’t want to write a straight memoir, but a novel. But if you’re going to write a novel about teens, and pursue mass-market publication, it’s usually got to be in the Young Adult genre.
That’s just how the publishing industry works; I know, it ain’t right. She really didn’t want to write a YA, so we created a fictional story that takes place when the characters are adults, but referenced their childhoods when referring to the back story, and that’s the origin of this unusual project. Which is why, in the final edits, things got kind of weird.