Write What You Know

Throughout my writing career, I’ve read and been given the advice that says, “Make sure you write what you know.” If you take this suggestion at face value and run with it, your writing will be quite interesting and realistic. This is something that all readers want, no... demand. It’s something that helps them escape from reality and enter into another world for a while. They want to be the hero or the heroine swept off her feet by a man who truly knows what love is.

I’m not sure how this piece of advice works. When I first started writing in junior high school I wrote love poems. I knew NOTHING of love, hell, I hadn’t even been kissed (but thank you N.M. for the distracted make-out scene under the bush). So how in the world was I able to write such ‘moving’ pieces? In all honesty, they were only moving to me, but they seem to make sense now that I’m grown up. 

Let’s take a look at my first poem:

Lazily we walk along the beach

You and I hand in hand

Nature has its things to teach

We listen and learn

But never turn 

To see what we left behind

I‘ve been told that the poem is pretty deep for a 7th-grade-know-nothing kid. That advice seems to hold no bearing for me. What enabled me to accomplish meaningful words about love?

I’ve thought about authors who write science fiction and fantasy. How are you able to KNOW that genre? I’m pretty certain that we don’t know aliens or fly spaceships that are able to land on the planets of far-away galaxies. What talent would help them accomplish that feat? Were they abducted by aliens? No matter how much I try, vampires don’t accost me at night wanting to sweep me away to their lairs -- I’m totally up for grabs if you happen to know one. (Sorry sweetie!)

Ooo, think about horror books, or murder mysteries. I’m not sure that I’d want to go through the possibility of having a poltergeist, a killer car, or a rabid dog attack me. I’d be in a mental hospital in a padded room when the end of the ordeal finally arrived, not a good thought. Murder mysteries are pretty much just scary. I would hate to think that someone who did all of those crimes would be out writing books. So how do authors get into their killer’s head?

I am able to say in my case that my understanding came, not from experience but, from a great love of books. Since the time I was able to run around town on my own, I would go to the library. During the summer months, my stepmom didn’t have to worry about me. I walked to the library in the morning and didn’t go home until four o’clock. I sat in the children’s section of the library and read non-stop. The summer reading program was never a problem for me, I surpassed the requirements tenfold. 

Every author I’ve ever talked to, and most authors I’ve read about, have an avid love of reading and they’ve had that passion for years. Don’t think for a second that I’m dismissing the advice that was so kindly given to me, but there has to be more to the story. There are life experiences that make you a better author, and they should be taken and used. But never underestimate the power of a good book.