A very important part of understanding a writer is understanding where they came from. Most creative writers, whether they mean to or not, leave a whole bunch of footprints in their stories, and as a reader I've definitely noticed the tracks in retrospect. Tolkien's particular love of nature, for example, or Rowling's experience at Amnesty International. Those sorts of insights cast an interesting light on the writing, which is more than a little interesting to know when you're trying to make it big like them. Know the person, know the art.
There are probably a lot of things I could say about myself that would shed some sort of light on my writing. But honestly, this is a blog post -- you shouldn't have to know my life story to understand what I'm saying and why the heck I'm saying it. And after trying to explain everything in the first three drafts of this post, I think I've finally learned my lesson. Life stories are great for insight, but they inspire rumination and way too much meandering tales of what-I-did-when-I-was-five-that-was-interesting. And this post sorta does have a topic -- would be a shame to just ignore it.
