- How do your family experiences translate into writing scenes?
I could write a book about this topic. My current WIP is set in a Mennonite Community in South Central Kansas. Where my grandparents and mother and many relatives all came from. I didn't use family characters (well, one), but the culture and ethos of the town that I was familiar with as a child.
I took one of my mother's adventures in the 1920's and wrote a book (not yet published) about it. Just loosely based on her. But it was such fun and my husband and I made a trip to California and saw the house where she lived and some of the scenes where the book took place.
I wrote a novel (Festival Madness) about the Burning Man experience. My oldest son lives nearby and I've visited him and the festival three times. Even got a poem out of it.
My latest book was partly inspired by #2 son who went to scout camp and worked there for years in Northern Wisconsin. We visited our kids at camp and it always seemed like a special place. So I wrote Murder In the North Woods. No family in this book, but again, we spent a week doing research and I found a wealth of places to set scenes from a garage apartment to a huge modern house on a lake to a cottage and even a shoe company (I worked in the shoe industry for many years).
They say "write what you know," advice I've followed for all my books. I set my first novel, The Shadow Warriors in my husband's home town in Germany. Second novel, World of Mirrors came about after a vacation on a Baltic Island. Everything I write is somehow related to places or landscapes that speak to me. Short stories are also fair game. My husband's life as a young man and my life as a young girl have all gone into my short stories. I even dragged bmy father into one, but no one will ever know.
Here are some accomplished writers who will have their own interesting take on family and writing.
Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Marci Baun http://www.marcibaun.com/blog
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.com
Posts
Hi Judith, Love the title and doesn't it just sum up what the writer does? Happy christmas, Anne
ReplyDeleteYes, hopefully, when we use family as characters we change them so much they won't know! You are right also in how where we have live also plays into our stories. Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteGood point - WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW and we all know what our own family life was or is like. And those very real experiences add realism to our stories. Good post.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me an excellent excuse to visit places you then enjoyed! Great post.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what sort of adventures your Mom had? She sounds a lot of fun. I loved my mum dearly but if anyone could give lessons in keeping a stiff upper lip in the best British tradition, she could!
ReplyDeleteLike you, I’ve avoided writing about the pandemic in my fiction. I think it’s pervasive enough in real like it’s not something I care to focus on in my fictional life. One can hope this will all be over soon.
ReplyDeleteI hope my comment posted.
ReplyDeleteMarci