Imagination or reality

Ahh, such a short title, but I feel that I could write pages on the topic. But then I would be like an opera singer warming up for a performance. It would be 'me me me me me'. Okay, give me a break, it is late. Anyway, I think that my writing would be a bit of both. It also depends on what I am writing and why, and what mood I am in. I often write poetry to help me understand my feelings. I may create characters or situations which are imagination, but the feeling produced by the poem is reality. Sometimes I write about people I know, but I put them in an alien environment and they react in the way the people I know would. There are usually elements of both imagination and reality in my stories even if the reality is a short description of something which is based on a picture seen in a book or of a forgotten childhood memory, or if the imagination is little more than deciding which clothes someone is wearing that day. I would also be interested to know how much reality and imagination is in other talers' writings.

You might be interested in this thread from a while back - autobiographical or not? started by fishbone early last month. There are some interesting posts on there. http://www.abctales.com/phorum/read.phpf=1&i=3533&t=3530

I'm certain that, if we're honest, we'd all admit that rather too much of ourselves goes into our writing. Where else does our experience - or need to express ourelves - come from? It's not just us amateurs: D H Lawrence was a Nottinghamshire lad born and bred. Are we not supposed to be able to guess this from his work? Can we read the review of any new author without noting the similarity between his/her own life and the subject of their book? No chance. Embittered Yorkshire miners don't write cosy brittle middle-class comedies. (Not as a rule, anyway!) Sheltered Surrey public-school boys don't write realistic tales of deprivation and suffering. It's a bit like asking if Frank McCourt is Irish. Maybe we move away from this need to use our own experience as we progress, but I think that some personal experience is the starting point for virtually everyone: I certainly started by writing a novel based on my own student days (partly because I've always felt that the sixties is now so misrepresented in the media) and branched out. Okay, I'll calm down and give someone else a turn now - but I won't believe anyone who says that they're completely divorced from what they write!