What you should and shouldn't publish

Exactly – infuriating excuses. “You have to write the book you have to write.” Bollocks. If you feel the need to write about it, fine – that’s what diaries are for. She says she writes with a piece of her heart she has no control over. Bollocks. Which piece of her heart sent it to the publishers – or does she regularly wander around in a dreamlike state, uncontrollably submitting manuscripts. As to helping her son, he’d already read the entire manuscript – why would seeing it in Waterstones window make any difference (apart from the potential humiliation). Sure it will bring the subject of skunk to the fore, but there are other ways of doing that and they didn't seem exactly keen on the idea of donating some of the royalties to a campaign. Whatever the consequences, I'm pretty sure the greater good wasn't her motivation. Besides, as someone said, they're supposed to be looking after their own children first and foremost. She says she wouldn’t have published without her son's consent, but Jeez, not exactly overwhelming consent, was it? Even from her own words it was obvious that his was a weary acceptance of something he was neither happy about nor approved of. But hey, she’d been spewing details of her family life for public consumption for years. He presumably went for damage limitation by asking her to correct the worst bits of character assassination – that he’d been blasé about his girlfriend’s abortion and that he’d tried to get his brother into drugs. Going by the Guardian interview, however, it doesn’t appear as if those changes were made sufficiently, other than by adding the epilogue about their meeting. On the subject of the Guardian interview – catch the disdain re the son selling his side of the story to the press – what’s the difference between the two exactly? Why’s one form of publication more acceptable than the other? Fact is, Myerson was commissioned to write a book about Mary Yelloly. Seems to me, she couldn’t come up with the goods so wrote the book she could write (as opposed to the one she had to). ~ www.fabulousmother.co.uk