I asked on a friend's meta thread what they thought my bats in the belfry entry revealed about me because I was curious to see what conclusions they drew. They were quite interesting. They did caveat it with the fact that obviously they know a bit about me so couldn't be going to it completely fresh, but still, some of the things they got from it were pretty good. There was only one thing that was off (I don't have any real interest in genetics or transhuman issues). Having said that, I've come to the complete opposite conclusion to you about drawing conclusions as to how they view the world from fiction unless they've written something which is very clearly designed to make you look at a particular issue in a particular way. I've done too much creative work that was creative (i.e. doing something new that wasn't about me) to be comfortable having someone think that they knew me because they'd read my stories. For example, if someone had only read my bad_evil_echo stories, they'd think I was a very different person to if they'd read my a_cheese_fan stuff but they're both written by me.

To be honest, until I've actually met someone, I don't think that I really know a person if I've only encountered them through a written format. There have been too many people I've been way off base about to feel that my conclusions could be reliable. The best example is my husband who I first met online and was COMPLETELY different in real life when I met him! Had he been how I thought he was from his writing, that romance would have been doomed to failure.

And on the editing front, it's very interesting how we are different people depending on who we are surrounded by. I'm pretty constant regardless but my mother and brother were very chameleonic and would be completely different dependent on who they were with. My mother in particular was a very different person in different relationships as she adapted herself to the man she was with.