Muse & the Marketplace 2018

"How autobiographical is this?" is the question asked every fiction author, no matter how far or how close the material might seem to be from their life. "How much of this did you make up?" is the question asked of every personal essayist and memoirist. The questions may seem pedantic but they speak to some underlying issues, regarding the ways writers use their life in their work, what constitutes fiction, and what, nonfiction.  How do we use the material of our life in fiction? How do we write about ourselves using more than memories? What are the ethics to each practice, and what constitutes crossing a boundary? And what is the nature of fiction and of nonfiction, and does it still matter? We will begin with a writing exercise that can be used to start either an essay or a work of fiction, and then address how each might be constructed accordingly, out of the same anecdote, and with that, all of the issues we encounter along the way.