Your world may take your writing places you didn't know existed.

Hello all!

Well, I've got nearly a month in at my new job and I have to say I do enjoy the work I'm doing.  I don't love the fact that I can't just whip out my blog and write when the mood moves me, but it's a decent paycheck, great benefits, and a wealth of writing inspiration.

I knew I could write comedy, but I would go long gaps without thinking of anything funny.  So I thought my calling as a writer was to look at the darker side of human nature.  Hence, a lot of what you find in my latest, Lies in Chance is quite a bit darker than in Dream in Color.  However, this job has opened up a wide, and wildly unlimited, source of humor for me to stock pile as topics for a writing project.

Sure, workplace humor is a great writing topic.  But I never thought of myself as a workplace humor writer.  Mom humor, you bet.  Kid humor, humor about my parents, sure.  But workplace humor, the kind that makes me howl when I watch "The Office" or shows like that, I never thought of as being something I could write.

I'm finding that out now, though.  I've been having fun over at my other blog It Can Only Happen to Sarah writing about the wacky world I work in, perfecting my anecdotes so that they fit nicely into a creative non fiction humor book.

What I'm trying to tell you all is that your every day world might be the stuff someone else's escape is made of.  Does that make sense?  What you might think of as the boring details of your every day life, that might be just the thing a reader needs to leave his or her reality and fall into something else.  And isn't that why we read books and watch TV and movies?  To escape our own lives?  I love gritty court room dramas.  No, they aren't fluffy or funny, but it's an escape for me from my own little life into something I'll never experience first hand. 

I know, I know...I always say, "You don't have to write what you know."  But there is a certain skill that a writer has to bring his or her own world to life.  Would the pioneer world of the late 1800's be as vivid to us today if Laura Ingalls hadn't put pencil to pad?  Would there even be a market for humor books based on real life if Erma Bombeck hadn't spent pages and pages discussing how reading an interview with Sophia Loren made her fat? 

So today my friends, I think you should take a look around and see where your real life takes your writing life. 

It might surprise you.

Now go forth and WRITE!