Today was my birthday; I turned 43.

Want to know how I spent my evening? On a romantic dinner with my wife? Nope. On a family dinner with my wife and my father? Wrong again. Hanging out with the guys and watching a game? Not even close.

Nope, I spent the evening of my 43rd birthday in a dentist’s chair, getting a chipped tooth drilled and filled. Don’t you just want to be me right now? Ahh, the life of a writer…

Next thing you know I’ll be spending birthday 44 testing diet pills or something. That’s about my luck lately. Heh.

One of the worst things I think a writer can do is limit themselves to the scope of their own experience. Many people suggest, “Write what you know,” and yet this advice is often misunderstood and misinterpreted.

You see, some of the greater works of literature were about things that no one could ever reasonably know. I mean, do you think Bram Stoker hunted blood-suckers in graveyards in the dead of night? Nope. Did Jules Verne ever scuba-dive to an underwater paradise? Also no. Did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever smoke a hash pipe? Well.. who knows?

The point is, you can’t always write only what you know, but you can write what’s relate-able and what’s familiar. Which opens up whole new worlds of possibilities.

On the “what’s relate-able” front, sure, no one can know what it’s like to, say, turn into a wolf three or four times a month. But one can relate to the fear of hurting others, or the terror of allowing an inner rage to show through. Women writers especially ought to be able to relate to werewolves, since they have a “monthly cycle” as well. Outstanding allegorical potential there.

As to what’s familiar, I confess I’d be out of my league trying to describe, say, equestrian apparel. It’s something I don’t know a lot about, so I’d just be winging it. That means not much until you consider that some item like that might be the key to unlocking a murder mystery plot; if that’s the case, then you darned well better become familiar with equestrian apparel because no reader is less kind than the one who realizes you’re b.s.-ing and the details aren’t right.

While a writer can’t know everything, they do have an obligation to the reader to appear that they know everything as it relates to their story.

So such advice is not given to discourage writers, but to encourage them to do their research and get the details right. After all, one would hate to consider the ramifications if their entire plot rested on knowing the correct calibration of the boiler dispersal pipe and, as the writer, you get it wrong and everyone knows that it’s wrong.

Doe that mean avoid writing about it? No. It means work harder at being a good writer.

I was browsing dog supplies at PetSmart when inspiration arose within me; suddenly, out of the blue, I’d solved a motivation for one of my characters.

Sometimes it can happen like that. Most of the time, however, the only real way to solve a character problem is to put one’s nose to the grindstone and write it out. Try a scene different ways, or write a monologue between you and your ticked-off character, working out the issues that are blocking you from forward progress in the story.

It tends to work.

One thing that’s true about writing is that you don’t burn a lot of calories doing it. I’ve had a decent summer of writing, but I haven’t been very active and what that translates into is that there’s now about twenty pounds more of me. Considering there was already about sixty pounds too much of me before this, that’s not good.

Of course, society is brimming with solutions, from weight loss supplements to diet programs to exercise videos and more. There’s even a TV show, The Biggest Loser, about America’s battle with waistlines.

Trouble is, so many people seem to think that if they’re a little bit cruel to be kind, calling you fat or commenting on your weight, that this will somehow motivate you to lose weight. Might help some folks; doesn’t work on me.

Personally, I am quite honest with myself. I know what I’ve eaten and overeaten to get me where I am. I know what I need to do to lose it again: eat less and exercise more.

It’s that simple. Which means I am without excuse. I either need to do what’s necessary, or stop complaining.

Reading good writing has always inspired me to get cracking on whatever writing project I’m working on at the moment. That’s been true lately. I just read the first chapter to Charlaine Harris’ upcoming Grave Secret, available on her Web site, and it made me want to fire up MS Word 2007 and work on my next chapter on my novel.

That’s exactly what I’ll do as soon as I get these blogs finished and get a good night’s sleep under me, in fact. I need the sleep, of course; don’t want to put myself in a position where I need the help of Seattle personal injury attorneys, after all…

Charlaine Harris is a great example of a writer who can make each of her characters sound different. That’s an essential skill when one indulges in first-person narration. The deal is not to concentrate so much on the Drew Estate, the murder weapon or the victim so much as to concentrate on the inner workings of your character’s mind.

Basically, you have to sink into their heads and see their world the way they see it. If you do that, it would be hard for all your characters to sound the same; you’d by nature be telling the tale in their unique voice. And that’s the goal.

When it comes to writing, sometimes it gets as hard as finding a source for dental implants Plano TX, or thereabouts. Then again, other times the words just flow.

But one trick I’ve found – or perhaps it’s just a principle and not a “trick” per se – is to just set aside time for writing six days a week, no matter how easy or hard it gets. It really does boil down to making progress and making time. There’s no other cure; doing the work or not doing it are the only choices.