ARE FICTIONAL WORKS BASED ON REAL EXPERIENCES?

When I was in college, one of my favorite TV shows was the daytime soap, Another World. I wanted to be a writer so the fictional story surrounding Cory Publishing Company was always appealing. Felicia was the romance writer whose "real-life" adventures rivaled those in her novels.

People do occasionally ask me if my stories are based on real experiences. My answer is "yes" and "no." Most of my magazine articles have been biographical, usually based on travels or my experiences as a teacher. My books are part escapism, part therapy.

Take the trilogy I am working on now.  Wendy in A New Season is a school teacher. She does have a son and does rescue an abandoned dog.  All that is real. Even the experience where Wendy is pulled over by a traffic cop is based on reality. The rest is mostly fabrication, an interesting story.

You see that mixture with most authors. Louisa May Alcott's, Little Women, was fiction based on her own experiences growing up with her sisters. Even the father that left his family to fight in the war was much like the father who frequently abandoned his family to take care of other matters. The women, at a young age, learned to fend for themselves.

Why do authors mix fiction with their own experiences? We are taught to write about things we know. It gives the story a sense of authenticity. In some sense, writer let others know a little about themselves that they might not otherwise share. The writer becomes vulnerable. In that respect, writing can be a frightening thing.