Samantha Ellis

As a girl, I had thought of myself as being, like Catherine Morland in Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey", "in training for a heroine", an activity I thought both important and worthwhile. I had read to find out what kind of woman I might want to be, lived through my heroines, and rehearsed lives I might live.

I felt let down when I could see the writer too much at work on a character because it reminded me forcefully that of course I don't have a writer working on my story, guiding me to safety, bending the laws of reality for me, bringing in a hero to rescue me or transporting me to a happier life by the stroke of her pen. No writer is writing me a better journey. No writer is guiding me through my misunderstanding and muddles and wrong turns to reach my happy ending.