People can lie in letters, but they tend not to. They certainly lie in memoirs.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.
I think one can be more honest in fiction than in a memoir.
The best liars lie with their eyes rather than with their words. This might put writers at a disadvantage.
When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.
An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.
I think novels are profoundly autobiographical. If writers deny that, they are lying. Or if it's really true, then I think it's a mistake.
Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway.
One of the questions writers bump up against in their work, whether they know it or not, is about lying. Because fiction is a form of deceit, and one's abilities are measured by how convincingly one can persuade readers that these events really happened.
Writing stories is the habit of lying put to good use.
As a writer of fiction, lying is the central thing to all books.