Sebald influenced me the most as a writer.

Another writer, Sarah Pitcher McDonough, comes to a similar conclusion and writes: “that because auto-fiction does not abide by the autobiographical pact, it needs a new one that articulates to the reader that the author is not honest, but is sincere he will lie, but will attempt to reflect the world with justice.” I would add that the author of auto-fiction tends to be both the narrator and the central character in his or her story, uses his or her real name, describes daily life often inventing or modifying certain facts, and does so in search not only for truth and justice but for the self. One of these French postmodern writers, Catherine Cusset, claims that the author of auto-fiction makes a pact with him or herself not to lie and not to invent for the sake of invention, but to be as honest as possible in his or her search for the truth. Since then, the term auto-fiction has been the subject of much debate, particularly among French postmodern writers, who, as yet, have not arrived at a better definition.

Autobiography, he wrote, was a privilege reserved for the important people in the world, at the end of their lives, to be written in a refined style while “fiction of events and facts strictly real” was his definition of auto-fiction and the “adventure of language” defined its style. The term “auto-fiction” was first coined by the French writer, Serge Doubrovsky, in 1977 to describe his novel Fils (translated as both Thread and Son) as well as to describe a genre that was part autobiography and part fiction.

My inventions autobiographer