Finishing the First Draft

My posts to this blog have been few and far between recently as I've been finishing the first draft of my next novel. While it seems easy to cope with the numerous calls for action and attention everyday life makes when I first start a new story, there comes a point when the need to be with the characters takes over and I find myself paring down other aspects of my life to spend the maximum amount of time possible with them. It's a weird feeling, but one that I have to admit I quite enjoy. 

Writing What You Know

"Write what you know" is the general wisdom offered to beginner writers, suggesting you start from your current base of knowledge. While that can be essential advice—especially to non-fiction writers, where expertise is all—as a fiction writer, I prefer to rearrange those four little words to "know what you write," which gives me the perfect excuse for trying new activities or learning new subjects. It all feeds into the fiction pot, if not in the current book, then maybe the next. It may not add much more than a few sentences to the novel, or may even just provide a trait for one of the characters, but there is almost nothing that can go to waste once it’s stored into the memory bank.