They say you should write what you know. I can understand that - applied experience gives a story and its characters life, depth. People can tell if a story is flat, and what kind of writer wants that?
But what if you haven't had that many experiences, by choice or by absence of opportunity?
It's something I've been worrying about recently. I've got a lot of ideas I want to turn into stories, but not a lot has happened to me that I can draw from for these specific stories. Others, maybe, but not many the ones I have in mind now. Elegy, one of the ones I've been holding forefront for a while now, is an exception; it's about regret, and life after high school, both of which are things I know. I think that's part of why it's so much more concrete in my head than others. But even it isn't fully covered by my experiences - unlike the main characters, I have both of my parents, and I've never been a foster child, a police officer, a ghost, or a homosexual, among other things.
I draw a lot of my inspiration for stories and characters from other stories; I experience them to understand how to write them into my own tales. But what if that's an inadequate substitute, doomed to fail because I have neither the chance nor understanding of how to gather the relevant experiences? I could talk to people with those experiences, but there's only so much I can gather from that as well.
Times like this, I really wish I knew an author I could talk to about things, get some solid advice. What do you readers out there think?
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