"Write what you know"...?

Of course, writing what you know can mean two things: writing based on pesonal experience, and writing what you know about, which presumably can include research (eg for historical fiction), and second-hand experience. Sci-fi and fantasy are different again; more imagination, perhaps, but still some experience (of feelings, emotions, behaviour etc).

I think I tend to write from personal experience. Because I've worked closely with people most of my life - nursing, couselling - I am fascinated by relationships, and I suppose they lie at the root of all my novels (that also explains why I'm hopeless at writing about crime. I've been there, and failed). But looking at my writing, I seem to have a preoccupation with death - there are funerals* in all my books - and this has happened almost unconsciously. Some years ago, my parents, in-laws and husband all died within ten years, and I'm sure now that all those deaths - all those funerals, all that grief, and all coming in such rapid succession - have infiltrated my writing, although I never set out to write about the experience, except in my first book (and I suppose first novels tend to be the most personal, because the first is the one that was been brewing for all those years when one was saying "I think I'll write a novel some day..."). For my next novel, maybe I should deliberately exclude all funerals, just to see if I can...

*Animal funerals, to, but I've blogged about those before!