Write what you don't know

Isabel, an MFA in Creative Writing, emailed me recently. "My teachers encourage me to write what I know, and what I understand from their cryptic advice is to not write fantasy."

Ah yes, WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW. The four words of advice/command that hang over every writer's head.

The most famous instance of this advice is in Anne of Green Gables. Anne writes fanciful romances and is rejected time and again. Then Gilbert advises her to write what she knows. (In the movie anyway--in the books, did anyone advise or this? I can't remember.) So she writes a book about a small town like her own with people a lot like her neighbors, and is published.

Hey, it worked for Anne. It could work for you too! As for me, I get bored easily. I'm not interested in writing my own life. I don't want to write about myself. I already live it, I'm already telling that story in a three-dimensional fashion. When I write, I want to experience something new.

So, sure, write what you know. And if you want to write something you don't yet know, then learn it. Study it. Make it your own.

I know Bayern. I know Danland and the Eight Realms. I know fire-speaking and quarry speech and how to sing to a she-yak. I know how to sling a stone with deadly accuracy and whip outlaws with my magically-long braids. These things I studied in my mind and learned on paper.

Other things I didn't have to study: I know how it feels to swoon for Mr. Darcy (though I've never vacationed in Austenland). I know what it's like to feel pain (though I've never been attacked by a wolf). I know how it feels to be betrayed (though my friend didn't try to kill me). I've been afraid, excited, thrilled, worried, heartsick, depressed, curious, lonely. I've lived as a human being in this world and been close to other human beings. No matter if these things happened in the twentieth century in the Western US or long ago and far away, people are people. And when you're reading a good book, no matter that these things are happening to the character, not to us, we still feel them in a way. Writing and reading are both forms of storytelling. Would the Wise advise us as well to only read what we know?

I humbly offer a change to that old four-word phrase: Write what fascinates you.