"I'd be interested in how you would answer the conceit (my word) of those
who
believe that by selling his work (and therefore 'using' the public) a
writer has no right to deny access to *any* of his works after death."

That's like saying that if a woman has sex with someone a few times, that
person is entitled to have sex with that person forever thereafter, that
the person can no longer say "no" having once put out.

Which is, of course, nonsense. The writer's work belongs to the writer,
and if s/he chooses to have any unpublished material destroyed upon
demise, then that is the writer's right. It's nobody else's business.

Similarly, in my case, I destroy all my previous drafts of whatever I
write. Anyone who wants to go through my files and pull out the earlier
(inferior) drafts of scripts or stories, looking for my handwritten
revisions...you ain't gonna find them. They're gone, trashed, roundfiled.


A writer has the right to release that of his or her work which they
desire; it's their work, after all. Nobody else gets a vote on that.

"And doesn't this impinge in part of the Cult of Personality question?"

Only in that some folks believe that they have a proprietary interest in a
writer, and that by virtue of spending X-dollars buying books, they *own*
that writer, or a piece of that writer, and that that writer is
accountable to them, owes them something more than the work, and the
respect between a writer and a reader.

Wrong.


jms