The WDC NanoLounge

Keep at it. Once you perfect your piece (probably in the rewrites), it will better than a work of 'pure fiction'. In my opinion, writing that is based on an experience which changed the author somehow, rather than being purely fiction, is somehow more charged. 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is pretty much Lee Harper's experience when she was a child. 'Sons and Lovers' is DH Lawrence during his growing years. So is Curtis Sittenfeld's 'Prep' and MJ Hyland's 'How the light gets in'. There is something more substantial, a sense that this is an experience the author is generous enough to want to share with the rest of the world, that's the difference between these works and genre fiction.