Real/Unreal

I used to write confession stories. I thought it would be easy because I knew a lot of really interesting things that had happened to people I knew. Just write about them and collect the check.
Right? Wrong!
I sent in manuscripts and got them back by return mail with notes scribbled in the margins saying they weren't realistic.
Which was how I learned that reality isn't necessarily realistic. That what happens in real life can be so far-fetched that a reader might toss it in the wastebasket in disgust because such a thing would never, ever happen in real life.
So I started writing stories that weren't exactly real. They were fiction but they were a simplified version of real life. And those stories sold.
And I've been doing so ever since.