One of the earliest pieces of writing advice I stumbled across was the oft repeated 'write from where you're at'. Writing is such a personal activity, so it is hard not to write from a personal perspective. Dickens' privations due to his father's financial difficulties generated many of his works.
I believe that if as a writer you have a message then that is why you have the desire to write. Denying that urge may detract from the finished product. Of course, when Dickens was writing he had fewer publishers/agents to impress. Nowadays, you have to find an agent who then has to sell your work to a publisher but if either of those don't agree that your work is marketable then your chances of success are zero.
When I began writing I thought my idea of Steele was okay, but my writing was raw and as hard as I tried I collected many rejection slips. That led me to self-publish with limited success but in all fairness, I didn't have the desire to continue and eventually settled to writing poetry.
One of my moments of demotivation was when I read a famous footballer's autobiography. As he is famous, he'd have no difficulty getting published. His name got him his opportunity as his fans were an existing market that the publishers couldn't resist. However, the book is, in my opinion, poor at best. Of course, that generated scotoma in my mind and it seemed that every news programme had a piece on some celebrity that had written a book! Trading on the fan base of existing celebrities is fiscally sound but artistically it's a dampener for the rest of us.
So, writing poetry was always a love of mine as I like sending messages. It is a more immediate method of exercising that writing muscle. You have to write the things you feel, in the best way you can.
God Bless
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