I received a number of comments from my last blog on whether we writers should only write what we know. Lots of encouragement. "You go, girl." "It's good to take risks." "Don't be afraid to do something new." One friend really got me thinking: "Do you feel like there's a difference in how creatively you can write when you write outside of your own experience?" Now that is a good question.

 Beginning writers are always told to "write what you know,"and the advice is usually taken to mean "write about your own life and experiences." I have even been told by a well respected writing teacher that a woman or a man should never try to write from the perspective of the opposite sex--it simply won't ring true.  For the most part, I guess, I've heeded that advice, and I have done what most new writers do.  I've written about family, as I have known it.  I've written about people, thinly disguised, that I have met.  I've written about things that have happened to me or to others in my life, knowing that the details I can bring to the writing will make it come alive.  And most of it, although not all, has been from a woman's point of view.

Last weekend my friend Virginia and I spent two days, without husbands, kids, grandkids or friends, at my house in the Berkshires, writing, sharing each others morning production, walking, talking, dreaming

Sometimes, as writers, we fall in love with sentences or phrases we have used in a story and, while we are editing we move heaven and earth to keep them in the text, even when they may not be serving a useful purpose.

September feels like the real New Year. The lazy vacation days are over. School is starting. The weather is getter cooler and, yes, in my culture it is the New Year, with the high holidays coming sometime in this marvelous month.

I have started a process notebook. On the advice (and assignment) of a novel writing teacher, I have begun to write a daily journal of what I am writing and how I am feeling about it.

People always ask me if my stories are autobiographical. "Did that really happen?" they ask. I always respond the same way. "I write fiction," I say, "not memoir." Of course, if I am being totally honest, I admit that many of the experiences are based on life.