I've talked a bit about how my great uncle, Pat Frank, was a scifi author who wrote Alas, Babylon. But I don't think I've said that he started his career writing for a newspaper's society section. He got in trouble when people discovered he'd made up an aristocratic family to give updates about.
Reminds me of an acting exercise Michael Chekhov did in Stanislavsky's class where he recreated the moment when he was standing at his father's grave on a chilly winter day. Stanislavsky praised how well he did the exercise until he found out Chekhov's dad was still very much alive.
