The Misconception of Write What You Know

I've experienced the term 'write what you know' for many years now. It mainly being used as the spear head of the lance teachers and professors throw at young writers who have difficulty drawing our their creativity. This leads to stories that focus solely upon a writer's own personal experiences, events, and in most cases psychological/mental/sexual/physical issues that they've gone through. It ends up being a retelling of such a unique experience that no one can really immerse themselves into because not everyone has dealt with the same specific issue. Which makes it even harder to critique a piece because it holds such intrinsic value, specifically to the writer, that it almost seems like its an attack on their person or life.

'Write what you know,' in its simplest form, is emotions. That's it. You take that concept like 'unrequited love', that raw emotion you experienced, you hand it off to a character, you yourself don't need to be vessel, let 'protagonist loveless' be the pinata to which your plot takes the beating on. It's the familiarity a reader has with the events taking place, the awkward interactions, the butterflies of crushes, that allows them to have a moment to reflect on what they experienced, how they handled it, and enjoying how your character chooses to resolve it.

It's so disheartening to see young writers in these writing courses, already anxiety ridden for opening themselves up for criticism, but to feel the need to write about such personal things because some professor told them to 'write what they know' and it's all they know.

I'm can tell you that I, personally, am not interesting. My personal experiences are filed under generic in every category. Nothing within my stories are real experiences, just real feelings. Although, I did fight a dragon, except it was green and was an iguana that found its way into my backyard.

If you ever hear someone utter the words 'write what you know' just keep in mind that it is in the context of emotions; not events. I find myself repeating this every year in class after a teacher or professor fails to elaborate on it, and it happened again just a few days ago; which is my reason for writing this. If I could paraphrase a lecture from a English Teacher I once had:

'A story can be like a coloring book with set lines for which a reader can fill in with the colors given to them. It can be a painting with a multitude of colors that can be interpreted countless ways. Your job, as a writer, is to tell the reader what that blank canvas is supposed to look like, and let them color it themselves with whatever colors they have.'