• On one side we have Anne Lamott who says, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

• On the other side we have Anne Tyler who is “adamant that none of her fiction is taken from real life.”

Do “you own everything that happened to you”? What if you were not nice to them without realizing it? Is there such a thing as an objective memoir?

Is it okay if your “fiction is taken from real life”? Do writers have a right to appropriate somebody else’s life stories? Do writers “own everything that happened to other people”?

What do you think? Feel free to share your views in the comments.

Image credit: Paul Cézanne. The Card Players (Les Joueurs de cartes), 1890–1892. Oil on canvas, Overall: 53 1/4 x 71 5/8 in. (135.3 x 181.9 cm). BF564. Public Domain.