They say that you should write what you know. It works, sometimes. For example, in non-fiction, absolutely, you should write what you know, what you’ve experienced, what therefore you wish to impart to others.
In fiction, though? I’m not so sure.
Ok, let me start with a positive example. I spent five years writing my debut novel, The Imposter, and the moment when it all clicked was when I inserted a character with dementia into the story. She wasn’t the main character, but she lent something else to the story. And I remember thinking those exact words: write what you know. At the time when I came up with this idea I was at the University of East Anglia, struggling with the tricky fifth/sixth/seventh draft of my first novel while studying for my MA in Creative Writing. During my time on the course, Wendy Mitchell’s first book Somebody I Used to Know, which I had ghosted, was sitting in the Sunday Times Bestsellers chart, and dementia was something that I knew – I’d written a whole book…