Writing What I Know

April G is the name I will be published under. Notice I didn’t say I hope to be published, but rather I will be published? I joined a number of writing forums a couple years ago, hoping to glean some wisdom from published authors. Instead, I found myself immersed in the moody cynical mutterings and curses of authors spurned by publishing houses. Listen, people. If you are really that great, and you deserve to be published, get out there and do it. Don’t sit around online bringing the rest of us down!

Write something original, something fresh, something inspired. Write what you know.

Every single person in the world has a different story with a different perspective. We each have different upbringings and family members, that crazy aunt or uncle, or a maverick grandmother to inspire us. Sometimes, when I used to live in a big city, I would be sitting in rush hour traffic, and would look around at the people in the cars around me. I was in awe of all the potential stories to be told, sitting capsulized around me!

I have two projects on the go right now, 37 Green Meadows and Minnie Myers Gets a Job. The first book, 37 Green Meadows, is a novel based on my own life. I call it a memoir – of sorts. I remember the gist of events that happened, but not specific details or conversations, so the event itself is true, but the rest is embellished. I completed the first draft of the manuscript during NaNoWriMo 2010 and it is currently with an editor.

The second book I’m writing, Minnie Myers Gets a Job, is inspired by a story I heard from my grandma. Her grandpa, Arthur Warner, from a long line of Warners in the small township of Hertfordshire, England, married Annie, a Scottish woman and they had seven children together. It was the early 1900′s, and they had a young housekeeper named Minnie Myers. Annie died under unusual circumstances, Arthur married Minnie soon after Annie’s death, and the children grew up calling her Aunt Minnie. It was never known how Annie died, and Arthur’s sister Jean took a strong disliking to Minnie, spreading vicious rumors about the pair.

I decided to use the names and the basic premise of the story and write a murder mystery with a familial twist. I’m doing NaNoWriMo 2011, but I hit a small snag. It took me two weeks to write 3000 words, when I should have been writing around 1667 a day! I just couldn’t get into a writing rhythm. I was struggling to put myself in that era and a country I had never visited, so I decided to write it in current times on the gulf island where I live now. Suddenly I was off, and the book is literally writing itself. Which brings me back to my whole writing premise: write what you know.