TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

When I was a teenager, I worked during the summers as a cashier and stocker in a seasonal produce market. I rode my 10-speed bicycle everywhere. All the other employees were young kids too, except the head cashier, who was around 30 and secretly in love with the hunky owner.

The first time I attempted a novel, I crafted a plot set in a seasonal produce market, peopled with young employees who rode their 10-speed bikes everywhere, crabby customers (obligatory), and a head cashier who was secretly in love with the hunky owner. It won a prize in college, but even I knew it had no future as a published work. Because although I’d put in some halfway decent drama, I was too personally connected with the characters to be objective about the story.

We’ve all heard the supposed wisdom, “Write what you know.” If that were literally true, all we would be qualified to write is memoir and reportage. But we have the urge to write fiction, and we have to start somewhere. Almost every author begins with something from their own experience. It can be done poorly, or it can be done well.

Here are some reasons to use material from your own life in fiction:

• You know it