Write what you Know

Write what you know.

That is the advice you may get from a teacher or a well-meaning person trying to encourage you. Some writers cringe at this, stating if we only wrote what we knew, there would be no fiction. The argument is that a writer creates a new world populated with people, places and events she has not experienced. She uses language and imagination and becomes an expert of manipulation; luring us into her world. She--or he--never travelled to that previously undiscovered planet; mutilated and murdered people with red hair; had her loins burn with desire over a ruggedly handsome cowboy; or single-handily saved the world from zombies without building up a sweat. If  writers wrote what they knew, there would be no fiction.

I have read and heard writers argue each side of this advice and have to say, I thought writers had more imagination and ability to think divergently. Because to write what you know is to write about the human condition. That story of travelling to a new world is about a quest, to explore and conquer. The murder story is about fear and survival, man's ability to control. Burning loins? Right! The zombie story? Our need to feel invincible, strong, and pretty.

The human condition. When I get stuck for an idea, I read a fairy tale or an Aesop Fable. I take that story and find the themes of that story and I steal them (really, people; there are no new ideas). That fable with the moral about revenge becoming your undoing becomes MY story about betrayal and abandonment. Why? Because as I added MY language and imagination, the story took a new direction. I used what I know to fashion a new story.

My story is going slowly, because I am using it as a writing exercise from the book The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises that Transform your Fiction by Brian Kiteley.  Exercise 1 is called "The Reluctant I." I am to write a 600 word first-person narrative with only 2 uses of first-person pronouns. Not so easy. But it is fun..and challenging.

I have about 8 unfinished blog entries saved. I look back at each one and I wonder why I can't finish them. Each one is a unique story and I am stumped. I can't seem to find my voice and complete them. Last night I finally figured out why. I was not writing what I knew and I wasn't saying what I wanted to say. Or to put it better, I wasn't writing or saying what I NEEDED to write and say. I have been self-editing.

So the question is: What do I need to know so I can write what I know?  Fearlessness, confidence, and arrogance.

To quote some guy I found on a quotation page:

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Cyril Connolly
(1903 - 1974)

Yes, Cyril. That is it. I need to find my self.