December 10, 2013

I am about to finish up the first book in my series "Thicker than Blood".  As I was writing, I was amused with how handy some of life's experiences are to writing and it made me think of a movie I watched, with Harvey Keitel and Joshua Jackson (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0376181/) where Keitel is a novelist giving advice to Jackson's character.  One of the bits of wisdom Keitel imparts upon the aspiring novelist is that you cannot write about something unless you've experienced it.  I couldn't find that to be any truer.  If I never worked at a hospital, how would I know it's environment?  How would I know what nurses spoke about, what they thought in situations?  If I didn't work at a gun range, how could I possibly explain how black powder smelled, or how guns react to being fired?  It used to be that I thought of all of my past jobs as embarrassments, but now, I find them to be a wealth of knowledge.  Experiences that I can draw upon to describe settings, occupations, environments...  It's amazing how perspectives can change.