Well personal stuff flows out much easier because you already know what you're going to write ninety percent of the time; but stories are about putting yourself in the environment and characters mind meaning it usually flows from ideas, which, for me, comes out like Morse Code a lot of the time. However, both get the same level of grammatical and punctual scrutiny.
I've always found personal easier. There's no creation, planning, outlining, or plotting to be done. It's all been created before you even think of writing it. It's just descriptive, how flowery or embellished you make it is up to you. That said, I'm more comfortable writing stories.
Hi! New to the forum today. In fact, I came here for this very topic. I find it much easier to do the writing of personal stories, but also find it far more challenging as far as editing. If I could add to the OP, I really want to write personal story or at least one based on my personal life. The difficulty is that so much of what I want to write might identify some people, and some aspects can't really be changed such as significant places, events, names, etc. I've tried to fabricate some of it, altering details that aren't instrumental. As someone fairly new to writing (I did a few creative writing classes ten years ago in college) I'd love to hear from people about how they juggle the personal versus the creative story. Violet
Currently I'm finding it easier to write personal stories. I'm hoping that at some point I can branch out into the fiction or even nonfiction that isn't involving me.
Another way to conceal their identities is not putting your personal name with the story, but writing in under a pseudo name. That way people won't even be able to guess by association.