Writing is Therapy, and So Is a Book!

As an author of fiction and nonfiction, plus writing under my own name and a pseudonym too, people wonder if it can all be done. I’m here to tell you, YES! It’s all about what you want to write, and what I write I enjoy reading. As a child, I never thought I couldn’t write a story, I went ahead and did it. Been doing this since age 8. I loved reading books, but I wanted to make up my own adventures. So, that’s what I did. I wrote science fiction, scary, and animal stories. Like another author, June Pair Kilpatrick posted here back on November 13^th, it’s all about the ingredients and how you cook them to make that story.

Where Do Ideas Come From?

Cynthia Ann Baldini

Readers ask me, “Where do you get your ideas?”

Everyone has probably heard the saying, “write what you know.” If you’re an expert in a particular field you can probably attract others who want to develop that skill, but hat sounds like advice for non-fiction writers. What if you write fiction, and you aren’t an expert in any field?

You can focus on what you know even when you write fiction. In Immortal Venus my protagonist has many of my own characteristics: we both hail from Richmond, Virginia, both got our degrees in art from VCU, and both traveled to Italy. I use my familiarity with the locations and with art to give a foundation of realism to what becomes an adventure into my imagination.