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As a writer, you must know what promise your story or novel makes. Your reader will know.

I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.

It's a bit cliche, but you can't go wrong by writing what you know. Even if you're a horrible writer, your own knowledge and experience is unrivaled. Nobody knows what you know like you know what you know. The way you see things is pretty unique.

I'm a writer; it's not just what I do, but who I am.

Really, as a writer, I believe that if you're going to write about your own life, you need to do it as honestly and candidly as you are capable.

If you're well-known, you're at the risk of becoming your own character. When you're alone, as a writer, you have to be unknown, putting it all on the paper.

You're a reader as well as a writer, so write what you'd want to read.

I write about what I know.

Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else.