For me, a novel isn't autobiographical in "real time" - but my life is there, transfigured by fiction. I think of a novel the way analysts deconstruct a dream - the dreamer is every character in his or her dream, including the cat and the dog. Or, think of it this way:  Your life is a mirror. You throw it down on the ground. It shatters into thousands of pieces. You can never recreate the mirror as it was, but each piece is still a part of the mirror, a part of the writer's life.

For me...