What You Know

Today I was reading Marissa Meyer's blog (she wrote The Lunar Chronicles which are fabulous YA sci-fi novels if you didn't know) and I came across a post where she explained why she disagrees with certain pieces of writer advice that writing instructors hold dear. Specifically, she mentioned what is perhaps the most dangerous piece of advice that I have heard many, many times:

"Write what you know."

I say dangerous not because it will ruin your writing but because the implication is that you are only qualified to write stories about what you know from personal experience.

Which, in my humble unpublished opinion (and it's worth pointing out most of my writing instructors are not best-selling authors like Marissa Meyer, though I do love most of their other advice), complete bullshit.

I don't know what it's like to be an orphan (like Elian) because I have both my parents. I don't know what it's like to have a difficult relationship with my mother (like Elana) because my mom and I get along wonderfully well. I definitely don't know what it's like to be a ruler or even to be obeyed without question in anything. And I have no fucking clue what it's like to be able to fly.

So clearly my novels are just no good because I didn't write what I know.

Like I said, bullshit.

I can imagine. Imagine is something we are discouraged to do after we reach a certain age, especially in school. We stop playing make believe. We deal with facts, things that can be broken down into testable questions with one right answer and we forget.

Only that doesn't work. All of you are capable of losing yourself in something that doesn't exist, be it a movie, a video game, or a book. You don't have all the details but you can imagine it and it is as easy as breathing.

I can imagine. I can imagine whole worlds and people and places and times that never were and never will be. I don't know it all from personal experience. I write it to explore the question What if...? and I don't stop until I've found my way to the end of the answer. 

Besides, if I only wrote what I knew from my personal experience, I would only write stories about nerdy girls who spent more time reading than watching TV when they were kids and how they spent almost every Friday night writing in high school.

Bullshit. I can write so much more than that.

I understand many of you have no interest in becoming writers, so feel free to stop here.

Fellow writers, you don't have to listen to everything the All-Mighty Instructors say. Sometimes what they say works and sometimes it doesn't. You learn to tell the difference by trying and failing and trying and failing some more. 

Write with unbridled love. Write with compassion and determination. Write because you have a story to tell. Write the story you know, in your heart, because your heart will keep going when your mind gives up.