There are people who take rumors and embellish them in a way that can be devastating. And this pollution has to be eradicated by people in our business as best we can.
I just find things that work and embellish them.
If you have a piece by Bach, he often develops the piece to such a high level that you can hardly do much more to it. But Saint-Luc wrote very simple baroque music, and so if you do not embellish it, it just falls apart. It's way too simple.
I do write a lot from personal experience, but I also embellish a bit.
The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.