Why is everybody writing personal stuff these days? Do we have to talk about ourselves in order to get cultural traction? How much do you really want to know about somebody, and have you read personal things you wish you hadn’t?
When we mourn famous people we’ve never met, we’re also mourning the people we once were. And that’s okay. Because there’s a lot of feeling wrapped up in all that.
The Secret Actress is currently writing anonymously for the Guardian newspaper about the stuff nobody will admit publicly in Hollywood. It’s time for The Secret Author to do the same for the writing community. Are you the next online Superhero?
Ten years ago we could never have envisaged a situation where we could be personally insulted by lots of people we’d never even met. Aren’t we the lucky generation to have all these opportunities, and more? What upsets us most on the internet? Is it trolls? Contradictions? Or simply someone who doesn’t agree with what we’re saying?
Batman v Superman is proving that nobody takes a blind bit of notice of 5 star reviews. They are meaningless, and yet authors and filmmakers continue to chase them relentlessly. Why? And how do we make it stop?
There are too many women crying in fiction. You can’t move in film and TV for women in floods of tears. Who is writing the crying woman? And how can we make it stop?
Tara Sparling writes 