Reblogged from Judith Barrow:

I think most, if not all, authors have something of themselves in their books: in the writing, in the voice of the text. We can’t help it; the words emerge from who and what we are, where we  come from and where we are in our lives.

There’s always something of me in my books. I don’t just mean in the writing, my voice, all authors write in our own voices, we can’t help it But, often, in my work, I write scenes that reflect situations I have lived through and what I have seen. By “reflect”, I mean they may not be the ‘real’ situations, but they always colour the lives of my characters and what happens to them. My own  emotions are threaded through in how they react, how they feel. I always say to my students, if they can’t relate to the way their characters feel, neither will their reader. That’s something I really believe.

Continue reading at Judith Barrow