Shall we call this a lesson learned?

I’ve hit a mid-writing crisis. Mom always told me to write what I know, but that never mattered much, because when I was little I could make anything up. Sure, the writing was really bad, but to a nine year old kid, it was great. I didn’t have to base my stories on anything, or do any research, because I just wrote about whatever I could imagine. And I could imagine anything.

But now... well, now it’s harder to make things up. To have something be taken seriously, you’ve got to base it off of fact. I mean, everything stems from fact – even fictional characters and things that happen, they stem from the author’s past experiences, even just in some tiny little bit. So, if you want to be a good writer, you have to experience things in your life! Stuff that could evolve into stories, whether factual or fictional.

I’m realizing now the importance of writing what I know... only, now I’m realizing that I don’t know anything.