My short story was finally reviewed last evening by the participants in the writing workshop I'm in. The story is based in my own experiences and I was pleased that it was received favourably, with some very constructive comments, which I'll implement on the weekend. Writing from "memoir" can be kind of perilous, particularly if you're dealing with something that still lives with you under your skin. It can lose its universality and sink quickly into a psychiatric case study. I showed the story to a colleague a couple of days before--he wasn't aware that the experiences in the story were actually based in my own. He seemed to like it, but labelled the heroine in the story "heartless". A participant in the workshop also wondered how close my heartless heroine was to my own personality as the character seems at odds with this workshop mate's favourable impression of me "in the flesh". It was a revelation to me that I could invent a completely new character just by recasting familiar events around a small, but dark, part of my personality. Mostly I'm proud that I've managed to go beyond "diarist" and into to the realm of "fictionalist". I'll be posting the revised story publicly soon.