Another unhappy truth that you might as well accept from the start is that life will never leave you alone. The demands of daily living will cut into your time, insist on your attention, shake you up badly, or sometimes even so delight you that you can’t concentrate on writing. Or so you think. But you’ll learn to use what comes, good and bad, and it will become part of whatever you are, and find its way under many disguises into your work. Some writers don’t feel they have really lived an experience, however joyful or sorrowful, until they have written about it. There are even times when it becomes our escape into an imaginary country where we can ease our minds from all that is troubling. When we come back to the “real” world, we feel renewed and better able to cope with whatever problem beset us.

-Phyllis Whitney, Guide to Fiction Writing