William Golding (Lord of the Flies; Nobel Prize) agrees with Margaret Atwood that a novelist’s regular self and writing self are distinct, alternate personalities

“Some of those who knew him best, among them the critic Stephen Medcalf, felt that the man they met and talked to was simply not the same man who wrote the novels. Medcalf went so far as to imagine that the novels were written by a ‘daimon’ or supernatural agent. Golding himself was half-prepared to countenance the idea. ‘That is right,’ he agreed, ‘Sometimes I have felt it myself and been astonished at what it accomplishes’. But he also felt the daimon idea was ‘too simple’, even if there was ‘something in it’. When writing in his journal he gave his ‘real’, everyday self curious comic nicknames (‘Pewter’ and ‘Bolonius’) to distinguish the ordinary Golding from Golding the novelist, who remained, it seems, outside his knowledge and control” (1, p.176).

Golding’s “everyday self” was really more than one identity—at least two—as indicated by the two names.  How many identities did the work of “the novelist”? He didn’t know. It was outside his knowledge and control.

Of course, the nature and number of identities, and what they know or don’t know about each other, is unique to each novelist. The only general conclusion is that normal novelists have multiple personality.

1. John Carey. “William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies.” New York, Free Press, 2009.