A comment was posted in the Jan. 27 blog on fear that goes like this:

“Both you and Anne Lamott talk about writing as if your parents are dead. In my novel in progress, I write about my mother as if she’s dead. The problem is that she’s very much alive, we’re estranged, and the mother character in my novel is portrayed in a negative light. The fact that she’s a mother is an important aspect of the story, so I can’t just give her a sex change. If the book gets published at some point, I’m afraid of litigation. I’m not sure what to do. Any advice?”

Where to begin??!

So many authors who’ve written about dicey themes or based their fiction on someone still living have come on my show and when I asked how they did it, mostly they said, “I wrote it as if it would never be published.”

I would say, just write it and worry about it later. By the time you reach the end, it may be a very different book, so don’t censor yourself now. Wait. And write.

I don’t know if you’re writing it in the first person. If so, perhaps doing it in the third person would change it enough.

Some writers wait till the person is no longer living, if it’s that dicey. I’m working on a project right now where I’m encountering the same worry, but the story is important enough to me that I’m writing and putting off worrying till later.

So again, I’d say, go for it. You need to write this book, so worry about it after you have a final draft.