Writing What You Know...and Then Some

I'm a big fan of writing "what you know." With that said, I write mostly fiction. I DO NOT write autobiography. Writing would be boring if I just stuck with what I know, but I ALWAYS use it as a jumping off place. I also write from true emotions. I write from true feelings. I write from my own experience. But it doesn't end there. That's where I turn it up a notch and then I turn it up some more. And then I turn it up some more. And then I let the story take me where it wants to take me. While this is evident in my short fiction, it is even more true in my novels.

My books practically write themselves. I start off with a brief character sketch and maybe a scene and then my characters practically take a life of their own. The protagonist of my novel "The Anguish of Angus Bluefeet" is virtually my opposite. At least on the surface. Angus Bluefeet is a 35 year old actuary at a life insurance firm who is married and has two kids and who loses a child in a freak accident. And he also plays a major role in an ABC reality series.

I was single when I started writing "The Anguish of Angus Bluefeet" and didn't have any children of my own. I hate math and while I was a drama student in highschool, I have never appeared on a reality television show. While I said that Angus Bluefeet was my opposite, I added a caveat: on the surface. We do happen to share the same background. He grew up in a Pentecostal household and my father is a Pentecostal preacher. There are also details in his life that mirror my own. His son falls off a storage shed and slips into a coma. I fell off of a storage shed when I was his son's age, but lived to tell about it. Angus is obsessive compulsive. While I haven't been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder per se...I definitely have some of the qualities...I could go on and on.

I won't spend any more time going through all of my fiction showing the similarities and the differences...I prefer to leave that a mystery for the reader, but I did want to touch on it enough to show you how to use your own experience in your fiction. Writing what you know can be a wonderful place to start...just don't stay there. Start with a nugget from your childhood and take it to a whole new level. Start with a horror story from your bitter divorce and make it "War of the Roses." Start with a story of loss and...well, you get the point. The point is to have a place to start, and let your characters take care of the rest.