I recently had the honour of being invited as a guest blogger on Speculations, the Chiaroscuro Reading and Workshop Series' site filled with fun and informative short articles by all types of SF writers. I decided to discuss the writing advice of "writing what you know." The first time I heard that advice it had been twisted by someone to mean: "If you've only been to Ottawa, set all of your stories in Ottawa."
And yet I'm still fairly certain that Tolkien never physically went to Middle Earth.
Click here to have a read and, while you're there, browse the rest of the Speculations blog.