Write what you know.

You’ve heard that advice before. Probably from the first time you were told to write a story. “Don’t try to get all fancy. Just stick with what you know.” Or, “If you have trouble creating a character, base him/her on someone you know.” It’s sound advice and I’m not going to knock it. And it works for any genre. That evil mermaid from a favorite book? I’m betting money SOMETHING about her was modeled after someone.

But…

Of there’s a but. All this becomes a problem if you’re ONLY basing characters on people you know. If you become too scared to step out of the box you’ve decorated so well to see if you can thrive without it.

My first manuscript was a story about three generations of one Russian-Jewish family. I liked to think of it as a Russian-Jewish JOY LUCK CLUB. It had romance, death, war, betrayal. It was a great premise. A 350 word epic. But it didn’t move. It didn’t sing. The reason? I based too much of it on my own family. Each time I dared to get creative, a voice in my head screamed “That’s not how it really happened! What will your parents say? Get back in the box!” Now, if this was a memoir, this would have been fine, but it was supposed to be fiction. In fiction, events don’t happen as they would in real life. They move quicker, toward something. There are obstacles at every step. My manuscript had obstacles but they didn’t factor in how they should have. The last 1/3 of the manuscript worked the best because that was the part most loosely based on my own life. That’s when I got my A-HA moment.

When I write now, I start with a voice. Sometimes it’s voice of someone I know/knew. Other times, it’s just a girl or guy with something to say. Along the way, they develop. I let my characters borrow some of my traits, some of people I know. I think a small part of me (like how I would react to a situation) appears in many of them. But I know to keep the story moving now, to not hold too tightly to a memory or vision of someone.

The goal is to keep stepping outside the confines of my box.

I was supposed to post yesterday, and for the first time since I began writing these Connect posts, I'm late. Why? Health issues, family issues, revisions...just life. It happens, sure. But what can we do to avoid delays like this? The obvious answer is to write things down on a calendar, which I started doing, and that has helped immensely. However, even with calendars, we get bogged down. Sometimes, I feel like I'm juggling twenty balls in the air at once, and I don't know how to keep them from falling (ok, since I can't juggle, this analogy would have worked just… Continue reading

My dad's bir