The time-honored advice battled-scarred authors often give any fresh-faced wanna-bes who asks: Write what you know. Beyond knowing a bit about how to put a few sentences together, mostly using the rules of grammar, I leave inspiring authors in the hands of the many greats who have inspired me in my craft. “On Writing” by Stephen King, “The Writer’s Journey” by Christopher Vogler, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell, and many other dog-eared volumes vie for space on my studio bookshelves. Yet whenever I run across the old “write what you know” wisdom, I yawn deeply and take a nap.
I believe better advice for wanna-be authors goes more like this: Writes about what interests you. Thanks to my mother, life in the Midwest during the 1930s interests me. She told me the stories of her life, doled out in bits and pieces. I picked them up and threw them onto the page, weaving a colorful tapestry to bind them together using my imagination.
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