The Personal Touch to Writing
Lorie Ham has been singing gospel music and writing since she was a child. Her first song and poem were published when she was 13 and she has gone on to publish many articles, short stories and poems throughout the years as well as write for a local newspaper. Lorie continues to sing and 4 of her 5 mystery novels feature gospel singer Alexandra Walters and are set here in the San Joaquin Valley. Her new project is an animal rescue mystery, another area where Lorie has experience. Recently she became the publisher of a new online magazine called Kings River Life. Lorie is married to Larry Ham, who works for a Christian radio production company. They have 2 children, Jessica and Joseph, 5 cats, 4 dogs and several rats.
I began writing when I was seven and started out writing short stories about my stuffed animals. I guess you could say that was my first taste of writing what I know. Write what you know is something you can hear often from writing classes, conferences and authors, but does it really work?
My first publishing credits were poems, written from my heart and my experiences. So again, I was writing what I knew. I went on to publish several articles, and again they came from my own experiences. However when it came to writing fiction I was hesitant to follow this same trend. I couldn’t find anything within my own life that I thought would make a good story. As a teenager I tried to write a Star Trek book, and while I’d always been a Trekkie it still wasn’t writing about something I knew from personal experience.
Soon after failing at that, I became interested in mysteries thanks to my brother, Chris, who introduced me to Sherlock Holmes. So from age 15 through 21, I tried my hand at writing several different types of mysteries again without success. I never managed to finish a book. However, I did manage to continue publishing poems and articles and I got involved in writing as a stringer for the local paper—again writing about what I knew.
In my early twenties I joined the local chapter of Sisters In Crime. When people there found out I was a gospel singer, they began telling me I should write a mystery featuring a gospel singer. In the beginning I laughed it off. Why would anyone be interested in what it was like to be a gospel singer? I mean it had been my life ever since I was a kid and to me it was just ordinary.
Finally I gave it a try. I created Alexandra Walters, a gospel singer living in Donlyn, a fictional version of my hometown Reedley, California. She is also a single mother of a little girl named Jessica. Now I’m not a single mother, but I did base little Jess on my own daughter (who is now 17). The first book, Murder in Four Part Harmony, took five years but it did get done. In it Alex’s old love comes to town along with the group that her family used to tour with. Finally, everything had clicked. The book was finished and published by a small publisher.
Book two, The Trouble With Tenors, took place at a gospel music convention and was finished within a year. Book three, Out of Tune, brought Alex’s singing family group back together and took place at a fictional version of a local Blossom Festival.
The latest book and last one in the series, The Final Note, came out this past April and sees Alex on a reunion tour with her family while being stalked. Stepping a little out of writing what I know, in this book I take Alex to the California Coast to a town called Ayr where her stalker is killed, she is blamed, and then the stalker begins again from the grave. In this book Alex also finally chooses between the two rival loves in her life, PI Stephen Carlucci and police Detective Will Knight. This book can be found in independent bookstores and on Amazon and is my first book available on Kindle.
So I’d say that writing what I know has definitely worked for me and I would highly recommend it especially to those not yet published. But perhaps more than anything writing what we know is a training ground for being able to reach beyond that. Now it’s time to move beyond Alex and the world of gospel music I know so well, though she may still live in short stories. My new series will feature Roxi Carlucci, who is introduced in The Final Note. There’s still a bit of “write what you know” in it as she is an animal rescuer which I’ve also done a bit of, but she’s completely different from me and lives on the coast of California. I’m also trying my hand at writing a mystery play, a vampire novel, and I’ve started an online magazine called Kings River Life.
If you would like to check out what I’ve been up to, and watch for these new projects you can check out my website www.LorieHam.com (which is between webmasters but has all of my pre 2010 stuff), my blog mysteryratscloset.blogspot.com, Kings River Life Magazine http://KingsRiverLife.com where I’m serializing my one stand alone book Deadly Discrimination and includes some book reviews and author interviews, or follow me on twitter @mysteryrat
August 20, 2010
Posted in: Guest Blogs
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7 Responses
My own experience has been that writing from what I know and establishing a protagonist and world with which I’m familiar has allowed me to branch out into less familiar territory. I very much enjoy reading about people and places thoroughly grounded in someone’s experiences — and your world of gospel music sounds like an interesting place to visit.
I haven’t yet found a way to use my own life as a basis for writing, even though there are several areas of it that are unique to me and could be of interest. However, my protagonist in the Marge Christensen Mystery Series does several things I have done — the investment club, her temporary job, her church, etc. Her art came from a late sister-in-law, who I wish were still around to help me with it! I think you always use things you know, whether or not you base your story on them.
Lorie, thank you for stopping by today—I’m looking forward to your new series!
Thanks so much for the wonderful comments. Hope you get a chance to visit the world of my books. I think you are right, we do access things we know whether we base our books on them or not, and starting with what I know is definitely helping me branch out as well.
And thanks, Lelia for having me here!
As is true with so much in life, the devil, if you will, is in the details. We all “know” a good deal more than we realize. We all also think we know a good deal that we are ignorant of.
Any writer can learn to know more about almost every subject they are interested in writing about. We call it research. It is a blend of what we begin knowing and what we learn on the journey that informs good writing, as well as how we use what we learn and what we know.
Lorie, I love that there are things that we “know” that we can write about, but I also enjoy that we can “learn” something new and write about that. Right now, I’m learning about cheese. Who’d have thought I’d write about cheese? I catered and ran restaurants and I’ve always been a cook, but I never thought to apply those facets of my past to my present writing…until now. Life is such a wonderful journey. Enjoy! [So lovely to meet you in Burbank!]
~Avery
AveryAames.com
Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen
I totally agree and I have experienced that as well-I just think especially in the beginning writing what you know can be a great way of getting ourselves going especially if someone is having trouble.
I enjoyed meeting you as well.
Lorie
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