Write What You Know

“Spend some time living before you start writing. What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, ‘Write what you know.’ It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.”-Annie Proulx

I recently stumbled across this quote by Annie Proulx, and I find it to be very apt. Many aspiring writers are, as she says, coiled tightly into themselves to the point that they cannot relate to the world in their writing. However I think there is something to be said for writing what you know, though I don’t mean it in the way Proulx is taking it . I give “write what you know” as the first piece of writing advice to anyone setting a pen to the page, in fact. Writing is a journey, a journey of self that takes you to that tightly coiled center of your boring little self, but the journey has a point, writing, as much as it goes inward, should bring what is inside out. If you are only going in, that is only half the journey. Writing is expressing those deepest thoughts in a way that others can relate to, a way that can bring your experience to others, rather than drag them into it. If you do not write what you know, then you bring nothing to the table. It is your thoughts and experiences that color your writing, otherwise you are simply another voice screaming in the void. Who cares for your thoughts? Nothing is new under the sun, and heaven help us if you ever find your thoughts to be unique. They are not. But only you come from your set of experiences, and that is what makes the need for you to “write what you know” so important. Have new experiences, learn new things, explore new ideas and locations. But write them from your soul, the thing you know better than anyone else. You can write magnificently on foreign lands, but if you have no experiences or emotions to attach to them, we’d just as well read an encyclopedia..