"Is Your Writing Real?"

(notes from a touring author)

I've been doing readings from my fiction for over twenty years and whether I’m at a bookstore, library, museum, university, book fair, conference, church or synagogue, one of the most commonly asked questions afterwards is "How much of your work is autobiographical?"

In the beginning I was puzzled, but my psychologist spouse explained it this way: "They want to know you better. They want to feel closer because you've touched them with what you read."

Maybe that was true in some cases.  I’ve suspected, however, that the question was almost a kind of test, as if the quality of my work was being measured by how much truth was in it. Did this betray some kind of suspicion about fiction itself?  Was a novel or short story better if less of it was "made up"?

The question has sometimes been offered with an addendum: "Writer X says none of his/her writing is autobiographical." The more I heard that, the more implausible it sounded.

Here's why. Everything I write is autobiographical because I wrote it. My autobiography includes everything that happened to me whether I remember it consciously or not; every dream or fantasy I've ever had; everything I've read or observed in the world; and finally everything that's been told to me by other people, whether it happened after I was born or before.

It’s all material.  It’s all mine. And it’s vast.

So is yours.

(Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash )