Boundless Imagination by Lorraine Bartlett
**The Little Blog of Murder welcomes guest blogger Lorraine Bartlett, author of Murder on the Mind. Welcome, Lorraine!**
Many a new writer is told to “write what you know.” If I’d gone that route, I’d only write about women working in boring offices, typing their lives away.
Luckily, my imagination expands beyond corporate landscaping. Oh sure, research is an important part of presenting credible characters, and the Internet makes it a snap. So over the years I’ve written as a man, a woman, a scientist, an investigator, a cop, a jilted bride, a widower, a doctor, a nurse, a car, an extraterrestrial, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Take my first published novel, MURDER ON THE MIND, I wrote it in first person from a male point of view. A man who’d been downsized (okay, been there, done that) who’s beaten and mugged (thank goodness that never happened to me), suffers a fractured skull (haven’t done that either), and goes to live with his rich, physician brother to recover. (Alas, no rich doctor/brother in my family tree, either.) After suffering frightening visions of a vicious murder, he feels compelled to prove his sanity by finding the killer.
My characters are usually very brave, facing knives, guns, claw hammers. Me? I’d run away and hide under the bed.
My characters often save lives in emergency situations. Me? I faint at the sight of blood. (Odd, I can write about it in pretty graphic terms, but seeing it for real! Clunk! I’m out like a light.)
Some of my characters are borderline alcoholics. Okay, maybe that one does hit a little closer to home. (Isn’t there a little Hemingway in all of us?)
The beauty of fiction–for writers and readers–is that it takes us from the confines of our real lives to experience the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows of characters we identify with in some way. And all it takes is a little imagination.
