I don't think there's such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Autobiographical fiction is very tricky.
The stories are not autobiographical, but they're personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I've learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.
I have this long-running idea that the distinction between fiction and nonfiction is not just, 'Did it happen or didn't it happen?' It's one of form.
Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical.
There's always going to be a little bit of autobiographical content to everything. It's how you lend some authority to what you write - you give it that weight by drawing on your direct experiences and indirect experiences from people that you know well, or a little.
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.
It is so common to write autobiographical fiction in which your own experience is thinly disguised.
Everything is autobiographical, and nothing is autobiographical. That's fiction.
In the broad sense, as a processing of everything one hears or witnesses, all fiction is autobiographical - imagination ground through the mill of memory. It's impossible to separate the two ingredients.
In a sense, any story that anyone writes is going to be autobiographical - whether it deals directly with the author's experience or not - because it captures what we're obsessed with while working on that particular piece.