A new series of movies about writers raises the question: “Can famous writers work as fictional characters without the fictional characters getting in the way of their work? Dramas about authors are encouraged by the high sales of biographies and tend to concentrate on their lives rather than their writing. But this isn’t just because of a cultural preference for gossip over substance, fact above fiction. The process of turning thoughts into prose is passive and private, and the metaphors for it – balled-up foolscap, scrunched-up brows – have rightly become derided movie cliches.”