I like to know how my story is going to end. And when I don’t know there is a kind of blind panic, which unsettles, unnerves, terrifies me. Like a wet finger run around the rim of the glass. I have to wait until the sound of this reverberating hum dissolves. Settles into silence again. And only then can I begin to breathe…
My days are spent constructing story, manipulating truths, assimilating life into fiction. To be performed, acted in, filmed, shot. I watch movies and comedies with the precise and earnest eye of a surgeon. Not because I believe I am anything special. I am a writer. Although that would denote a certain level of expertise. But in truth I feel a fraud. Uneducated. Unbrilliant. At times, frankly, illiterate. I lie about the books I’ve read. I am always trying not to be found out. If I am going to see a film, I prefer to have read all the reviews and to know the plot, beforehand. The joy I get is in piecing together the narrative. I like being one step ahead of the audience, with my insider knowledge, like some secondhand moonlighting cop, sifting over the pieces, working out how it is done. How it is being crafted.
— Abi Morgan, excerpts from “This is Not a Pity Memoir” (Harper, June 7, 2022)