It’s a question I’ve been anticipating since I started writing my novel. And it’s one I’ve already been asked by almost every single person I’ve spoken to about it so far. To any female novelist, this won’t sound surprising. You too, I’m sure, have faced a similar barrage of the following:
“How much of it is autobiographical?”
“So, did that really happen to you?”
“The main girl is you, though, right?”
I understand why people ask. You’ve written a story! It has characters! It all seems quite real! Of course, there are exceptions to that last part, like if the book features any of the following: talking animals, time travel, decent heterosexual men. And so on. (That last one was a joke, stand down).
Generally speaking, though, when people ask if your work is autobiographical it’s because it plausibly could be. But there are times when this might be appropriate and times when it is quite objectively not.
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