Kimberly's Write Life

There's an old adage that says write what you know.  Then there's Jo March or Anne Shirley (I can't remember for sure which) or maybe both that says don't write what you know. I just started reading Kinsey And Me by Sue Grafton. (Yes, I'm coming late to Sue Grafton)  She said that when she started writing about Kinsey Millhone she didn't know a thing about what being a private detective was.  She said she read everything from forensic books, to law, to medical books.  She said she took shooting lessons to understand what it would feel like to hold and fire a weapon. When I started writing about Charles Worth in The Day the Ivy Fell, he came to life and I'm not really sure how.  I don't know what it's like to be a man, yet most of my primary characters are men.  And maybe any men that read my stories will say it's obvious that I don't know what it's like to be a man.  But then maybe they won't. I don't know what it's like

As I mentioned in my previous post, I blame my parents for my needing to write stories. I've been going through some of my late parents papers (mother) and computer files (father). My mother had notebooks galore.  She loved going to an office supply or stationary store or even Walmart and buying a brand new notebook, just so that she could find a quiet place to sit down and write in it.  Sometime what she wrote was lists; shopping, inventory, ideas, etc.  Sometimes she wrote journal like entries.  Sometimes she cried out to God in prayer during difficult times of her life.  She wrote a lot. One of the things I found in her papers was a notebook from her first college experience where she trained to be a teacher.  It was only an associates degree.  One of the courses was College Writing.  The stories were interesting, but I saw that I come by my week grammar naturally. In my father's computer files, he spent a lot of time, especially most recently reminiscing about his e