How to Write Autofiction About Your Family Without Losing Your Mind | Literary Hub

Sitting here with my novel beside me on the desk, it still amazes me that the story could be condensed into a book. It was so complicated. It covered so much ground. Likewise, the genre that I settled on-a fictionalized account of a true story, sometimes called auto-fiction or the non-fiction novel-is also a wonder to me in that I was naïve enough when I set out to not know what kind of book I was writing. When a writer is given a story it is exactly that, a gift, to do with what we will. I could have made it into anything; a memoir, a biography, I could have used the true story as a jumping-off point, freeing my hand to play fast and loose with the plot. I could have changed all the names and been opaque as to how true or false it was, protecting my family from attention by keeping the veil drawn. I could have shut it in a drawer and refused to write it; I could have left it buried. But I didn't do any of those things.