“Write what you know” is one of the oldest pieces of advice. And for new authors, at least, it’s often easier to create plotlines that are based at least loosely on things/people/events we have right at our fingertips. Of course, many successful authors create characters and worlds based on nothing they have actually “known” or experienced. Think about Star Wars or Dracula, or even Harry Potter. This is where precise research or terrific imagination comes into play. However, I’ve never been one of those authors. I have discovered that my novels, contemporary love stories, almost always draw either consciously or subconsciously on moments I have lived, people I have met, places I have been.
This is not to say that everything – or anything! – I write is autobiographical. Far from it. But I have always been fascinated by the ways in which people interact – the ways they live, love, fight, grow, fall apart, heal, perish, and love again – and I explore those issues by looking at the world around me. There is a little bit of me in every heroine, a little bit of the men I have loved in every hero, a little bit of my buddies in every best friend.
My upcoming novel, One Night in Napa, is my third “One Night” story. All follow the common element of a romance that evolves over a single day and night: twenty-four hours in twenty-four chapters. One Night in Napa, though, feels unique to me because it always seemed the furthest from my own experiences. I am nothing like the heroine; I don’t really know anyone like the hero; and I’ve visited Napa Valley exactly once in my life. So it was fun to escape and create a world that wasn’t anything I “knew” but simply one I imagined.
I thought.
One Night in Napa is the story of a hero and heroine who seem to be completely different, two people who are both trying to protect their own family name while also grappling with the ways their fathers shaped them. Eventually, they discover that the common bond of family complications is greater than any difference between them.
My father passed away while I was in the middle of editing One Night in Napa. Somehow, thanks to the support of my editor and all my virtual and real-life friends, I got through those first few black weeks. Eventually, the sun came out again, I got up each morning and I soldiered on. And when the time came, I dedicated the book to my father, because every time I think about its underlying theme, I am struck by how much he influenced it. Is One Night in Napa autobiographical? Not at all. I didn’t leave home for ten years vowing never to speak to him again. I didn’t tell him I hated him or cut off all my hair in spite. And he didn’t…well, you’ll have to read the book to find out the biggest secret of all, that cleaves the relationship between father and daughter for so long.
No, my relationship with my father wasn’t nearly as explosive as the ones I created in my newest novel. But it was definitely powerful, in ways I never realized until he wasn’t around anymore. Does One Night in Napa explore the sometimes-confusing ways in which parents and children love, fight, and sacrifice for each other? Yes. Is it a tribute to the ways in which our fathers influence us, from birth to adulthood? Oh yes.
Guess I’m still writing what I know after all.
‘Write what you know’ has always been difficult advice for me to follow.
As a reader, I prefer stories set far and away, Science Fiction, Historicals, and so on.
As a writer, I become fascinated with something and I want to explore it. Doing so is much more fun for me than writing what I know, even if the research does get tedious. Thank goodness for the Internet!
But, when it comes to characters and conflict, oh, yes, I draw on experience for mixing all that up.
Wow, Allie.
Excellent post. I pretty much write the same way and leave little pieces of my life behind in each story but am nothing like my characters. I do model them after people I’ve known or admired but not necessarily enough to reflect any one person anyone could ever identify.
Congrats on the new release but I am so sorry about the loss of your father.
The loss of my father was actually the start of my writing career. I’d written since age 11 but never really took the craft anywhere until the death of my father and my Sheltie, Kazzy within two months of one another in the year 2000. Writing got me through my grief. I poured myself into classes and ended up writing my first novel which later published in 2003.
Anyway, thanks for sharing so much of yourself.
Dayana