Wattpad brings you a guest post from Emily Benet, author of the romantic comedy “Spray Painted Bananas”:
Imagine that a character in your book walks into your workplace frothing at the mouth because they know what you’ve done.
They’ve read every word you’ve written about them and they don’t like it.
They stand there trembling with rage and you can’t run away because you’re looking after your Mum’s shop and if you leave it the character might start smashing the place to pieces.
‘Your book is disgusting!’ the character spits.
And you hold your breath and your heart is pounding and you’re praying for some seismic activity to create a crack in the floor which you or they could fall into it, but you live in London and you’ve never even felt so much as a seismic twitch in all your life.
I don’t have to imagine it because it happened to me.
I was a Shop Girl working in my Mum’s chandelier shop. It was a place where customers liked to offload their life stories. By day I was a good listener and by night I was a blogger who’d recount these many hilarious and bizarre encounters. Sometimes it was too close to the truth and at other times it might have been a little exaggerated. I never thought the blog would be published as a book or that my customers would one day be reading what I’d written about them.
I discovered too late that it’s not enough to change the colour of a character’s hair if you’ve gone ahead and reported some of the real person’s exact words. I’ve learnt my lesson. Now I know you should only use one real-life trait and make the rest up.
With my new book, Spray Painted Bananas, I feel liberated. This time if anyone accuses me of using them in the book, I can genuinely say, ‘it’s fiction!’
Spray Painted Bananas satisfies a desire in me to write something upbeat and funny. It’s a romantic comedy about Amber, a broke temp, who after years of scrounging free wine from wacky art gallery openings with her best friend Farrell, decides there’s no reason why she can’t become a conceptual artist herself.
People often say ‘write what you know’ because if you’ve experienced it, it’s bound to sound more convincing. Well I’ve yet to spray paint a banana. But as the saying goes, ‘never say never’!
My book cover designer was only too eager to spray paint that banana on the front cover before he started playing with digital colour.
Perhaps I should introduce him to Amber. She sounds just his type.
Read “Spray Painted Bananas” on Wattpad:
‘Spray Painted Bananas’ is a romantic comedy about Amber, a broke temp working in a catering firm in London, who after years of scrounging free wine from wacky art gallery openings with her best friend Farrell, decides there’s no reason she can’t become a conceptual artist herself. A chance meeting with the wealthy, young art curator, Elliott Frinton-Smith, sets things off in a desirable direction. Now all Amber needs is a brilliant idea to grab the attention of the nation. Spray Painted Bananas explores love and ambition with the touch of the absurd and plenty of bananas.