Isn’t that what they always say? Like it somehow helps get past the writer’s block. Or the imposter syndrome. Or the aching desire for someone, anyone to acknowledge that you sit in a non-ergonomic chair day after day, throwing words into the void.

Where was I? Right, writing what you know.

I’m wondering if you can take this too far? At least too far to still call the resulting narrative fiction. At what point does what you know become what you do? Or did? Or are?

Let me back up.

I’m writing a novel. I started drafting back in November ’22, had my first complete draft a year later, and now I’m working on a final round of revisions before I start querying agents. That means I’ll have what is to me a final draft that I’ll be sending out the first chapter of along with letters asking agents if they’d like to represent me and my nascent authorial career.

I love how that sounds, “authorial career.” Anyway.

My protagonist is a middle-age Seattleite, who happens to have a salt-and-pepper beard, bald/shaved head, and be a few pounds (cough…cough…) overweight. Oh yeah, and he happens to be both an HSP and am Empath. Sound familiar? If you haven’t met me, he’s me. His name might be Alex, not Jesse, but otherwise, he’s me. I made my main character me.

I’m not the first author to do so, and I’m unlikely to be the last.

Our backstories differ, of course, I didn’t literally make his bio my bio, but in broad strokes we grew up similarly. We experienced similar issues around our sensitivities as young men, and neither figured out our status as Aces until nearly middle-age.

What’s worrying me is this—At what point does writing what you know become the lazy option?

I’m about to start drafting the second book in what I hope will become a wildly successful series featuring said protagonist. He’s an intuitive investigator, using his innate sensitivities—slightly embellished for effect, of course—to solve what I guess you’d call cozy mystery-style cases for his clients. That means no murders, no gory discoveries, and no gratuitous sex scenes. The former because of my own sensitivities around even reading emotionally-charged stories, and the latter because of the above comment about us both being Ace.

I wouldn’t know where to begin writing a sex scene.

In this new draft, one of the characters seems to want to be a writer. So now I’m writing about myself, with extended…powers(?). I mean, I can’t actually see energy trails like Alex. That would be awesome, though, right? And now he’s going to take a case for a couple, one of whom is a writer.

Like me.

Where’s the line? At some point, surely my creativity will, I don’t know, branch out? Start including details that are pulled out of thin air, rather than out of my own archive?

Right?!