A few years back, when I was doing my MFA in creative nonfiction, I remember one of my Professor's saying, "I won't accept any essays about grandmothers, because they  end up being too sentimental, too biased, and the story gets lost."

But, to me this seemed like a great challenge: how can we maintain a writer's perspective when something is so close to our hearts? If you want to take on the challenge, try writing a scene focused around your grandmother. I chose a scene when my grandmother was just becoming a woman. I found that removing myself and trying to think of her as something other than my grandmother really helped. I'm interested to see what techniques other writer's will use to cope with these potential pitfalls. And, although I'm applying this idea to writing, my assumption is that it would work equally well in the other arts.