When I am in the middle of writing a book, I like to have bread crumbs scattered in my outline. Things that make a character deeper, or give them a conflict they can work on through the book. I often get these ideas from things that I don’t necessarily agree with. But something about the situation catches my eye.
A few months ago I started rewriting my collection in either my voice, or the voice of one of my characters. It seems like a good way to be able to scatter bread crumbs. For example, I have a character who is under stress. So I look up ways to handle stress and use some of the advice available. I haven’t yet given a character a tight IT band after she recovered from hip surgery, but I can see that going into my writing at some point. While the advice is to use what you know, nothing says you can’t be learning more stuff as you go.