How Autobiographical

For every writer, the dreaded question always comes: is your novel autobiographical?  It's tough to answer. Some writers write about what they know. Others live in totally imaginary worlds.  But, I think, on some level, and taking into account the power of the subconscious, we all write from our experience.

 For me, it's the issue of the known and unknown. I start with what I know: my grandmother, first love, Maine where I was born and grew up, marriage, family.  But then the story and the characters take on a life of their own and grow and develop and do such surprising things that they are no longer your grandmother, your kids, your husband (and thank goodness for that!) but their own people who might or might not bear a faint family resemblance to their actual ancestors. That's the art, I suppose-- creating a world more real than the one it's based upon. It's like dialogue.  If I were to transpose a conversation word for word, you'd be bored; the writing would feel awkward and stiff—but when dialogue works well enough that your readers praise its authenticity and laud your perfect ear, you've touched both the artifice and the art in writing. The writer struggles for the same transformation the painter attempts: those few lines which can magically reveal an essence, a soul—everything true and revelatory that an exact replica can't.

Thus, the fiction writer has the best of both worlds, the real and the imagined. In real life, I married my childhood sweetheart and now I am writing about the one that got away (and creating what might have happened if he hadn't.) Though he was English and, for a long time, lived in the country, I made up his world.  It is a world and a place now more real to me than the real one ever was. (You've found your inner Marmite, a novelist friend once said!) Let's face it—unlike in real life, in fictional life, I can have my cake and eat it too.  I can change history. Pimples can turn to smooth skin, stammering to articulateness, being dumped to being pursued.  My heroines can play the flute and do intricate math problems in their head, things I could never do. Their husbands can be historians and ornithologists and cook a mean soufflé. Yes, we might start with autobiography, but the writer has the power to embellish, dramatize, and improve on it!

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