Can you write about someone you cannot understand?

Emmanuel Carrère, The Adversary and what happens when a writer cannot find the explanation

Writers explain things. Even when they don't announce it, it is one of the basic pleasures they offer us. It's why we love to read. They take the mess of experience and give it shape. They decide where a story begins, which details matter, and how one event relates to another. 

In nonfiction especially, we tend to assume that if a writer has spent years researching a person, interviewing people who knew them, and examining the evidence of their life, they will eventually be able to tell us who that person really was. But what happens if they can't? 

Can you trust Truman Capote? In Cold Blood, true crime and what happens when murder becomes literature

A little while ago, I asked a question that probably isn't advisable for somebody who spends quite a lot of time writing about other people.

Can you ever really trust a writer? Rachel Cusk's Life of M got me thinking about it. Joan Didion provided the warning. And Truman Capote wandered briefly into the argument, having spectacularly demonstrated what can happen when a writer's friends discover that the funny little man at their dinner table has been paying considerably more attention than they realised.

Writing the pitch before the query: What literary agents are really looking for

There is something oddly intimidating about writing a book pitch.

After months, sometimes years, of writing a novel, reducing it to a handful of paragraphs can feel almost impossible. You've lived with these characters, wandered through their world, untangled their motivations and rewritten countless scenes. Then someone asks, "So what's your book about?"

Suddenly, your carefully crafted story becomes "Well... it's complicated."