I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam

I ONLY WRITES WHAT I KNOWS

I have been turning my hand to fiction writing for the past couple of months and, even though my background is factual and journalistic, it’s been an interesting experience. I am actually very pleased about where I am so far. My only problem is an almost obsessive impulse to make my protagonist a variation of ‘me’ in one form or another.

In conversation with a couple of successful novelist friends, both maintained it’s virtually impossible to not be somewhat autobiographical. “You write what you know,” was the basic opinion. “The person you know best is yourself. With others, you can only guess from observation.”

It has been said, in that context, that Hemingway’s women really sucked because they only came from the perspective of his ‘macho dude’ persona. Yet, novelist Wally Lamb, with She’s Come Undone successfully wrote a tale of the trials and tribulations of an overweight female, and he carried it off so well that female readers couldn’t believe the book wasn’t written by a member of their own sex.

I mean, I really, really like women (too much, a few times in my past), but I am not so sure I could second-guess the psyche or motivations of females, even ones I know very well. I don’t think I would have been married three times if I was completely in tune with the way women think.

At this point in my writing process, I’m unsure of exactly the direction my book is going to take and that, of course, is part of the adventure. But, I do want to include some ‘rounded’ other characters, and I also want to include some events with which I might not have personally experienced. I’ll let you know how I do with that. However, I have decided, for the sake of veracity, to confine myself as much as possible to that which I either know or have experienced.

So, I can write about:

- Having been divorced and remarried
- Having seen a dead person
- Having had a friendship (non-sexual) with a prostitute
- Watching a person go through heroin withdrawal
- Making love in the moonlight on a Hawaiian beach
- Being drunk
- Smoking pot – many years ago, and like Bill, I DID NOT inhale
- Having been in an adulterous relationship at the time of my first marriage
- Having been shot at (nothing to do with the adulterous r/ship)
- Having lived in the UK
- Meeting assorted so-called ‘illustrious’ people
- Having traveled fairly extensively
- Riding the London Underground
- Having been embedded by the police to join them in a drug raid for the sake of a story
- Riding in a jet fighter plane (way cool!)

And lots more during my years on the planet. But, you get my drift in this regard. By the same context, I would find it difficult to add an entirely truthful flavour to the following:

- Having murdered someone
- Having robbed a bank
- Using IV drugs
- Being in a war zone
- Having a homosexual encounter. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, as Seinfeld said, just not within my proclivities
- Travelling in Asia or Africa. Haven’t been to either -- yet
- Suffered starvation
- Been raped
- Been in prison. OK, once, when I was young and foolish, I was in jail for 12 hours (horrible experience but, hey, ‘material’). But, that’s not quite the same as the ‘big house’

Likewise, I could go on and on with this list. But, I think you get my point.