A blog about writing . . . and a lot of other things

Monday, January 23, 2012

Oh, right. I'm supposed to be blogging...

So, my mother reads my blog.  (Hi, Mom!)  That led to a little awkwardness from my last post.  Also, my husband asked if I'd written anything else since the depressing one.  I said no, and he said I might want to write something a little perkier this time.

Everyone is a critic.

I went back to work today.  I've been excited about it since, as you know, I have a hard time not valuing myself based on my productivity.

The house that is costing me my sanity.
I was, in fact, productive today.  I'm also absolutely exhausted.  I've gotten used to running at a pretty easy pace, and there was way too much happening.  Mostly I'm to blame.  I sort of put an offer in on a house yesterday, so I was trying to handle my first day back at work - new hire paperwork, welcome backs, a pile of tax returns to prepare - along with phone calls and emails and requests for documentation.

Tomorrow will be easier.  Really.

I started a new book, by the way.  All of my books have been very slightly autobiographical, other than of course things like telekinesis and turning into blue superheroes.   You write what you know unless you want to do research, right?  So, in the new book I decided to go whole hog and make the main character an accountant.  I find the job rather interesting, and hopefully I can convey that to a reader.

Many of my main characters start as me.  Then I add lots of really cool stuff that isn't me and take away all the things that relate to me that I think are too obvious or that I don't like.  Perhaps I should try a different tactic, but it will have wait.  This one is a CPA.

What do you think?  Should you write what you know?

1 comment:

  1. I think you write what you know, because if you write what you don't know, it usually shows. That said, if you dream it up vividly enough, I think that counts as knowing it. Also, you can usually get away with writing what nobody knows.

    I write fantasy, so that I don't have to know anything.

    ReplyDelete