Write What You Know

In case you don't recognize the person in the photo above, it's Mark Twain, who allegedly said, "Write what you know."

Our life experiences, good or bad, reflect on the page.

Writing what we know puts personality into our writing. The cavernous mailbox in one of my books (Castles on the Sand) comes from personal experience. Our own Border Collie is the inspiration for Blitzkrieg the dog. Our Charlotte came out of nowhere when we opened the door and then disappeared for hours. (We eventually trained her and she stopped running away.)

Some will say, "Write what you love, because your going to read it a hundred times."

They might be kidding, but it does wring true. A lot of work goes into righting a book. Writers will read their manuscript over and over, looking for misplaced quotation marks, missing commas (how do you know it's missing if you can't see it?, I ask), mispelled words, the wrong character name. Or finding a better turn of phrase to express what they’re trying to convey.

Several people can read a manuscript and miss errors. The worst case I've seen is a book cover with a typo in the book's title.

Now, go back and read the beginning of this post. I deliberately put four typos in it. Did your brain auto-correct what I wrote? (Answers are at the end of this post.)

The writer's victories and defeats might appear in their works. Characters' struggles and triumphs make the characters believable. More human. The reader will either love or hate the character, wanting to cheer the protagonist on, or cry when they fail. They might even hope the villain comes to a terrible end.

Personal touches are what I feel make the story seem real. Believable. Personal.

I hope when you read my stories that you can take something from them. Something that helps you in your life journey. Or at the very least, make you laugh.

Did you spot the errors?

4th paragraph: your = you're

wring true = ring true

righting a book = writing a book

mispelled = misspelled