I'm behind on reading contest entries. Not as good as last years, but I think that maybe I'm only remembering the good ones. There were some last year that needed a lot of work or redirection, but few stuck in my mind.
They say you should write what you know, but I wonder. Amateur writers seem to get bogged down talking about selling antiques, writing lesson plans, whatever. It's peripheral to the story, interesting in small doses, but after a while, I want to remind them that they are telling a story.
I think it would be an easy trap to fall into, especially in nano writing. If my story got stuck, I could talk endlessly about cooking or coffeehouse drama, not advancing the story at all. It wouldn't seem boring to me, and I wouldn't realize the reader would have long put the book down and gone to see what was on TV.
So perhaps it is good that I am dropping an accidental explosion in a chemistry lab into the piece I am rewriting. I know little about chemistry, and will not bore the reader with the properties of solid carbon dioxide.
Dry ice can explode. It's all we need to know.
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