After listening to Janice Galloway talking about her anti-memoir last night (In the Ryan Centre Stranraer) and looking through the latest edition of Mslexia, the two prompted me to get out of my 'haven't time to write' phase and actually get back down to some serious, or maybe not so serious, writing.
Janice Galloway talked about how all of most writers' characters are based on people the writer knew or an amalgam of a number. This is certainly true of my characters in the monologues and short sketches I've written. She felt free to write about her mother and sister only after they had died. She noted that as she got older, more conversations from childhood came back, and scenes could be reproduced in some detail - but are these an accurate record or partly fiction and does it  matter anyway? Hence her term anti-memoir. Food for thought.