Writing What You Know

I’ve seen much conflict over such seemingly simple writing advice: that you should write what you know. As a fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian girl (when I started writing), I worked mostly on things that I had made up entirely in my head, so it didn’t seem to apply to me one way or the other.

However, as I’ve gotten older and I desire to do more than simply write a story, but also to use such stories to explore larger topics and themes, I’ve seen life throw me situations that make me wonder about this advice. In my first WIP, Low Expectations, a major theme in the tipping point is faith through impossible circumstances. These past few years, I (and the rest of the world) have had to walk through a million different hurdles and hurts that have strained my spirit and stretched my beliefs. The WIP I’m outlining, The Second Prince, is going to be thick with grief. Before starting this story, I hadn’t experienced much loss in my life; yet, suddenly, I find myself grieving many things: long-held dreams and stolen chances, close friends and beloved family, whether these people have actually died or only the relationship has. In penning a story on a girl in her 20’s, seeking every entrance to the brave new world of adulthood, I find myself being stretched—and even sometimes desiring— to take on new responsibilities, switch up stale schedules from previous seasons, and begin to step out of my comfort zone.

I’m not strictly happy about most of these circumstances, and yet they play into my writing so clearly, that it is impossible to see them as coincidences. As trying as it feels, as extended as this time seems, there’s a strange comfort in it somewhere, None of this is by accident. All these stories from my life will matter someday. In the small details and interwoven themes, these experiences will enter the artwork I create, and the realness I impart as a result of experiencing these emotions will be palpable. That authenticity will resonate, and maybe, it will touch the heart of someone in a similar situation who doesn’t have the words to speak of what they’re going through.

I found this quote once where a writer* encouraged with the words, “Everything is material.” Meaning both that all things on Earth are material, instead of eternal, and that everything you go through as a creator is material for your creations. Now I don’t want to belittle anyone’s pain by relegating it to, “Ooh! This can be inspiration later!” and I don’t want to ignore my own pain by folding it away into a story instead of feeling it for myself. Yet a certain hope does flow from that point of view: if everything is material, then perhaps, one day, all of these pains can be used. I can use them. I will use them. And if there comes a time later when I use these struggles, then “later” does exist. This struggling season ends, and another one begins. Something happens after all of this.

And then, also, if none of it is coincidence, then there’s Someone up there composing all of it. And maybe, He really is working it for our good.

Maybe that’s what they meant all along, by write what you know. Write what you’ve learned, what you’ve experienced. Write what you’ve seen and heard and felt with your soul. Write your story, simply, by any other name.

*Google says the quote is by Philip Roth, but I don’t fully know the context of the interview/book where he said it. So, I’m not certain if it’s the same one I heard. :)