Monthly Archives: May 2025

Write What You Know…Except When You Can’t

Normally I’m a big proponent of “write what you know.” That’s why you’ll see a lot of Pacific Northwest settings in my work, along with horses and things I’ve taken the time to learn. Most of the time my inspiration comes from incidents, or thoughts that pop into my head when out and about. And all that political and corporate stuff which shows up into my stories?

You guessed it. I spent several years as a complex securities litigation paralegal, and my spouse worked in sales for an aerospace-oriented foundry. I saw and read a LOT of stuff, though what I picked up from the paralegal days often falls into the category of “you wouldn’t believe it even in fiction.” I was also a political activist and organizer for a number of years. Some of those stories have fallen into the “stranger than fiction” category. Others are just cooking and waiting for the right plot to come along. A couple of them…I’m not sure I’ll ever write, though those experiences definitely shaped some of my perspectives. Let’s put it this way…for me, the eye-opening parts of Careless People (one person’s memoir about working at a particular social media company) elicited the reaction of “this isn’t news to anyone exposed to the Jack Welch school of corporate thought, except for the degree of hedonism involved.” Even then, I wasn’t wildly surprised.

But…I was a middle school special education teacher and case manager for ten years. Part of that experience included walking the picket line on strike as well as being on the union local’s board.

With a few exceptions, however (my short stories “Aspens” and “Witch Trails”), teaching is the one experience that doesn’t want to lend itself to fiction. Oh, I’ve written nonfiction based on my teaching experience, primarily a series of essays about learning disabilities and working with learning disabilities. One of those essays explaining the Patterns of Strengths and Weaknesses method of learning disability identification was recommended reading by a professional association.

But fiction?

Not really.

I recently read a review of the one book of mine that lightly touches on my teaching experience. The reviewer wished I had gone the route of cozy fantasy and focused on the struggles of teaching cryptid children, instead of the story choices I made, which backgrounded that aspect of the book.

Well, I wish I could have written that story.

I was a big fan of Zenna Henderson’s “People” stories back in the day, which focused on teachers who encountered alien kids and the impact on the teacher/the kids. I’d love to write my own version of those stories, and to some extent wanted the book to lead to that kind of tale. However, that particular story (which needs some serious reworking for a second edition, especially to set it up for potential sequels) didn’t want to go in that direction.

My teaching work, except for isolated inspirational moments, overall falls into the category of some of those political experiences I probably won’t talk about even in fiction, except perhaps face-to-face and maybe not even then.

Why is that? Why can’t I cross that line?

Part of the reason, I suspect, has to do with the nature of those experiences. In the case of politics, one of those stories involved powerful people, a bit of corruption, and significant political scheming by nearly everyone involved. Plus I’ve lost touch with a couple of the main people who were a part of the story, and I don’t want to get much more explicit than a wee bit of vibes without getting their permission first. Let’s just say that the experience in that case and a couple of others ripped apart any illusions I might have about political purity, in both partisan and issue-oriented politics.

The story has shaped some of the darker political moments I write about, but…the details will not be written.

Teaching has a different element involved. I was teaching during the era when blogging was big (as in Blogger, Blogspot, LiveJournal…). For a while, teacher blogs were everywhere. I read them because I was in the trenches and found reassurance that what I was seeing in the classroom was not necessarily unique. I used techniques from those blogs, thought about issues raised, and otherwise used them as a lifeline while doing a very challenging job.

Then the crackdown began, primarily tied to critiques of No Child Left Behind. The union issued warnings about watching what you said on social media. Holding a drink in a casual social media picture could be grounds for getting fired in some school districts. Disgruntled parents and controlling administrators combed social media (which wasn’t that much at that time) to find reasons to get rid of teachers criticizing the status quo.

Teacher blogs started disappearing. A few exist, a very few, although I’m starting to see more appearing on Substack, usually from teachers who have passed their probationary years (which vary from district-to-district and state-to-state—my district had a three-year probationary period) and have some protection.

So why didn’t I put my teaching experience into fiction, except for those limited pieces? I’ve been out of the classroom for a number of years, and I certainly don’t have a job to protect these days.

I’d like to say that writing about teaching is similar to those political stories I won’t write. Confidentiality. Concern about the story veering too close to real life. Overcoming a filter that still exists in my own mind, despite being years removed from the actual experience. Not wanting former students to pore over my work to see if they are in it.

But I think there’s more to my reluctance to write about teaching in my fiction.

Teaching for me was a very heart-rending process, especially the case management side where I needed to advocate for my students. One of my principals cautioned me about this deep emotional involvement, warning that it could lead to burnout.

It’s part of who I am, but…I find I just can’t write about it, and the reluctance goes beyond concerns about confidentiality and related issues. I’ve not tried to push it, but the block still exists. I suspect I’m not the only writer out there with “things I can’t write about.”

Sometimes you just can’t write about what you know—and there are darn good reasons why.

We’ll see if that holds when I turn back to the major rewrite that one book needs, especially if I consider it for a series. It’s been six years or so. Maybe I’m done processing the experience…or not.

For now, writing about teaching is just something I can’t do in fiction. And I just have to live with it.

(recently fallen Douglas fir—of its own accord, not something we did! We can’t legally cut it up for firewood—besides the green needles, it’s too big in diameter. But it’s an example of what firewood cutting on the national forest is about.)

Getting old ain’t for sissies.

Never have I felt that statement more than in the past few months, when we’ve been working on a house to sell (long story, not going into it here) and now, with woodcutting season upon us.

Ten years ago, when we retired, we figured we’d be able to keep up the active lifestyle which also involved cutting our own firewood for maybe five years, perhaps eight years. Well, here we are, ten years later, embarking on our eleventh season cutting firewood in the spring. Sure, we ended up buying some last year for health reasons, but this year we’re back in the woods, racing to get our firewood cut for the season in the spring.

There are several reasons why we prefer to cut in the spring. It gives time for the wood to cure and burn better. The temperatures are better for several hours worth of exertion. There’s less danger of triggering a fire because everything’s still damp. And…there’s also the prospect of coming across these darlings.

But it’s also not just about harvesting wood and morel mushrooms. Spring flowers are popping up everywhere. We’re likely to see wildlife—on our last trip, we spotted sandhill cranes, deer, elk, mountain bluebirds, and turkeys.

It’s a chance to shake off the limitations of winter and get out into the national forest around us. See what changes the winter has brought—what trees survived the winter wind and snow, whether some of our backwoods roads are still clear, and just get out and explore everything around us.

Because of last year’s issues, we didn’t get into this section of the woods then. We generally don’t do the majority of our woodcutting in this area—it’s farther from town, therefore a longer drive and longer time spent cutting. As it is, even the closer locations end up taking most of the day. This area just adds a couple of hours of drive time on gravel roads to the time spent out.

Not that it isn’t rewarding. When we got out the first day, I exhaled heavily, not realizing until then the degree to which I’d been craving this expedition. Seeing familiar stringers of trees. Favorite rock formations. Little spots that hold meaning for the two of us, perhaps not to others. Here’s the grove where we spent several years thinning out dead white fir and Douglas fir. There’s the place where we kicked up a big herd of elk. That’s the backroad where we saw a big cinnamon black bear who took off running.

The spot where I worked on a particular book (there are several of those places) while the husband cut down a tree. The place where we had to resort to pulling the tree down with the pickup because it hung up on other trees (we don’t do that sort of thing anymore; that happened when we were younger than late sixties and early seventies). Favorite flower patches that bloom at a certain time of year.

We end up chasing the flowers and mushrooms to higher elevations. The closer location tends to hold snow longer, so we don’t go there right away. That spot also holds hunting season memories, where we camped for a couple of years with a friend (until a fall rain and wind storm knocked the tent’s center pole down and we had to scramble to keep everything off of the wood stove until we could get it set back up). The particular place where we found grouse for a few years.

With all that, the clock is ticking. We’re well aware that this could be the last year—but that’s been a concern for many years now. So I drink in the surroundings, the forest, the canyons, and the prairie land that feels so much like home. Cruising down the old road that follows an infamous horse and cattle rustler’s trail. The trees. The grasses. The flowers. Enjoying it now, before age/politics/fire/logging takes it away from us.

This land strikes that deep chord of home within me. Even though I didn’t grow up here, even though I lack ancestral connection to this sort of land. What European connections I know about lived on coastal lands. But coast doesn’t resonate with me. Not like the mountains. The forest. The high ridges and deep canyons. Those are more home, more the sort of place I enjoy than the coast.

We’re moving slower these days. What we consider a full load in the pickup bed is less than it would have been before now. We’ve added a backup heating system to the house, for various reasons. But we take the time to savor what we’re doing (well, as much as one can when lugging an armload of firewood to throw in the back of the pickup). Workaholics, both of us, but we’re learning to slow down.

Firewood cutting isn’t just about providing for winter. It’s a time for reconnecting with the land we love to be in. For assessing the health of the lands we love. Over the years, we’ve seen more and more dead trees from a species that is fading from these forests (white/grand fir, because the winters aren’t as cold as long as those trees prefer). We’re doing our small part to remove wildfire fuel, because at some point those trees are gonna burn. Better they burn in a wood stove with a catalytic converter than provide more fuel for a wildfire.

Or so we tell ourselves. Reality? Not reality?

No matter.

However one wants to cut it, we’re staying active, we’re out on the land. The two of us, together, after forty-five-some years of dating and marriage.

I’ll take that any day.

Warning: potentially controversial opinions ahead.

It’s no secret that I am not a big fan of generative AI/LLM use in any aspect of the creative process. I’ve become increasingly distressed as I see more and more people admitting to their usage of LLMs and genAI to create their fiction—especially when I hear people who I used to respect talking about how they use it in fiction. They seem to see it as no big deal where…I have issues with these uses, especially those who claim it helps their prewriting processes. That’s a huge “OH HELL NO” red flag for me.

I’m not just talking from my own biases as a fiction writer who has had her work scraped for AI training. My special education Master’s degree project focused on remedial writing, and I spent ten years working as a resource-level learning specialist and case manager at the middle school grade levels. The more time I spent working with students who were struggling with reading and writing, the more I learned about the value of the prewriting process, not just for good writing but for reading comprehension. The same skills used for prewriting also are connected to reading comprehension.

So how does that combination of skills work? It’s tied to how humans handle language. Language processing is a complex mixture of receptive and expressive language usage. Receptive is what you read and hear. Expressive is what you speak and write. An ability deficit in either area can lead to problems in both reading and writing. If your receptive language processing has a deficit, then it becomes hard to understand what you’re reading—and causes difficulties in your ability to express your understanding of what you’ve read. If your expressive language processing has a deficit, then of course you have issues describing your understanding of what you have read. But expressive language deficits have further challenges, because often part of the problem is the ability to organize your thoughts in order to share them in a manner understandable to others. Someone can be operating at the genius level in receptive processing while struggling with expressive processing—but no one is going to know it because of their difficulties in being able to express their knowledge and understanding!

(And yes, this mixture of high receptive/low expressive ability can and does happen.)

The link between prewriting skills and reading comprehension is surprisingly simple when you think about it. Prewriting is a cognitive process which expands an individual’s ability to analyze, compare/contrast, and assess how information fits together. These are the same tools a good reader applies to whatever they are reading.

This ties into reading comprehension as well. Part of understanding what you read is the ability to follow along with a writer’s thought thread. The same tools used for organizing writing also work for making sense out of someone else’s writing, whether you use mind mapping, graphic organizers, or the like. Take any graphic organizer and fill it out using a short story. A novel. A film. An essay. Prewriting skills are also structural analysis tools for reading comprehension

The key is that the more that you wrestle with understanding something you read, the more you think about it and sit with the concepts a particular piece of work presents to you, the deeper it will imprint upon your memory processes and be available to you for later reference. The same is true with writing, where you have wrestled with the concepts and characters and points you want to make long before you start typing, or put pen/pencil to paper.

It doesn’t matter if you are an obsessive planner who writes in a linear fashion, someone who writes sequences out of order to put them together later, or someone who feels their way along with the story. Part of the drafting process involves the creation of a coherent thread of thought that makes sense. Handing the foundation of putting those organizational pieces together to a LLM, even if it’s just generating prompts or ideas, undercuts the formation of that thought thread in later drafting. Otherwise, you risk not thinking about discarded notions, the messy planning pieces, or the research rabbit holes that might end up in the work after all because the generation process didn’t come from your brain, but from the LLM, so you haven’t spent time contemplating all the information that gets buried in your brain. You miss the rewards of the exploratory process, such as the “aha!” moment that pulls it all together because one of those discarded concepts ends up fitting into the work after all.

For me, that’s the biggest red flag when it comes to the seductive lure of genAI for prewriting, especially if you’re wanting to grind work out quickly. Yes, the LLM has access to a lot of data. But what it doesn’t have is the ability to combine that data into an intuitive leap that makes your work different. Sure, when the time crunch hits, it’s tempting to use LLMs for the sort of brainstorming you might otherwise do with selected others. Heck, thanks to the massive amount of scraping of writers’ work out there, you could even ask the LLM to generate ideas from the perspective of your favorite writer. Sounds intriguing—but.

How much have you lost by spending your time creating appropriate prompts?

Wouldn’t that time be better served by doing research on your own? Immersing yourself in the appropriate readings, so that your backbrain starts generating its own notions? Wrestling with the idea that doesn’t want to come to life just yet? Laying the foundation for that intuitive leap that lifts your idea above tropes and clichés?

That’s the thing. To me, all the tasks that people say they want to outsource to genAI are important, integral parts of my writing process. Yes, it’s a slower way of writing. However, after writing twenty-five books and a number of short stories, I’ve found that it is worth the extra length of time required to do my own planning rather than outsource it to a plagiarism machine that relies on brute force memory association and is unable to take that creative, out-of-the-box intuitive leap that human brains are capable of making.

It all comes down to that sweet, sweet discovery moment when you realize that your subconscious has been simmering its way to a solution for that dilemma you’ve created for yourself. That’s as much a part of the writing process as putting down the actual words—and to omit it risks sliding into mediocrity and cookie-cutter story sameness.

Why take that chance?