Very often people have a poverty of experience when they’re young. So if they just write about what is true to them, their stories can be a little flat, and without interest for people who know this experience and comprehend it already. They’re bored by the story. On the other hand, if you start exaggerating what happened to you and you don’t do it well, you fall on your face. It’s embarrassing. So this is the dilemma that faces a young writer very often, if they’re capable of going in both directions. Not all writers are. Some writers can only fantasize, and some can only be true through the experience. But if a kid were going in both directions — which is always a sign, I think, that you might have some possibilities in the future as a writer — then very often you have to make a calculation deep in your unconscious of which method you’re going to go with for a given book.