On Fiction Writing and Liars

Last night my professor said of an author's magazine interview, "of course it's hard to know how much of what she says is genuine, since all writers are liars anyway." Edgar Poe once ran a fake news article about the arrival of a hot-air balloon from across the Atlantic, and gathered huge crowds to buy the paper in which the story appeared. We all know, of course, that writers of fiction must fabricate characters, plots, and settings, as part of the creative process, but it's often difficult to tell to what extent the fabrication extends to the writers' real lives. Do we, as readers of fiction, allow some lying from our authors outside their fiction? Is it possible to know whether truly great fiction writers are lying or not? Perhaps we don't care, as long as the writing is good. Maybe the genuine and the fake are indistinguishable for some people. One wonders which came first, though--the lying, or the fiction writing? It's quite likely that I've been unable to write fiction because I've been unable to lie. Perhaps I could take some tips from Poe.

Pictured is (possibly) Poe in his coffin, from www.celebritymorgue.com. It's quite likely to be as fake as Poe was.