On Writing and Knowledge · 7:03pm May 14th, 2018
Mr. Hemmelgarn has been showing up again. He's my old high-school English teacher. And late at night, or when I am really tired, he appears just out of sight. Just behind the corner of my eye. I can hear him breathing and wheezing, so I know its him. He huffs and puffs like a slowly-deflating air mattress, and he stares at me. He stares and whispers four ugly words:
"Write what you Know."
Shut it, Mr. Hemmelgarn. That's bad advice.
The disease of "write what you know" is the very reason our discount book shelves are chock full of the same old paperbacks full of stories about Creative Writing professors at a Liberal Arts college in West Jesus, Iowa. He's estranged from his wife and can't stop fantasizing about the student who sits in the third row and braids her hair during class. The climactic scene (warning: spoilers ahead) is when the professor has too much to drink at a staff function, and crashes his car because a pig was standing in the middle of the country road.
Just shoot me.
We also have the man who writes about how strange and ugly his tiny hometown neighbors are, now that he has escaped to the big city. Old Emmit at the gas station lost one of his last three teeth, and he got so mad he drank too much and beat his daughter for looking at a boy at the Fros-tee stand.
Chill out, Mr. Hemmelgarn. Life wasn't that bad.
Let's amend that phrase.
Here's one: Know what you Write.
If you don't know how a sailboat works, then you need to learn all about a sailboat before you include one in your story. That seems reasonable, right? Don't let's go overboard: no one wants to read a thirty-page aside about the advent of the windlass. It's good that you know what it is and how it might work (especially if the plot revolves around it, for some reason), but your knowledge might never see the page. And that's OK. You are now aware of the windlass, and therefore better able to put us on that sailboat with your words.
There's another amendment that I would like to propose: Write what I don't Know.
This is a bit tricky.
I look for surprise in my stories. I love and crave novelty in the stories I read. Most readers do, so it is up to the writer to have a perspective that is truly their own. When you bring originality and subject expertise to a story, that knowledge hits on all senses. Your descriptions carry the flavor of that knowledge, even when you don't include every fact.
If that knowledge is about a subject where my own knowledge is lacking, then it doubles my enjoyment of all that added flavor. We read for story and plot, yes - but we also read for how you season your story. Show us something that you know well, that we have never considered before today.
It could be a craft or a skill that you have. It could be related to travel or recreation. It could be how your family does a holiday tradition.
It could be a trauma or disability.
I want to be especially careful here. I am not advocating for self-traumatization so that you have something to write about. Put the pills away, Mr. Hemmelgarn.
Instead, know that your life-events have shaped you in a way that is different from how I was shaped. Know that the world can be an awful place, and that your past might be solid evidence to support that fact. Know that your story is yours, and you get to own it.
And, in ownership, you can elect to share it.
There are a few of you who might think I am talking about you. I am. Your stories have inspired me. Not only were they a treat to read, but they gave your readers a point of view that they did not know before. They show us what life looks like from your perspective, and in that way they bring us all closer together.
That's what good stories do. Storytelling is a communal activity, and I am listening.
1. I believe Brandon Mull, the author of the Fablehaven series, once said he had to do ten pages of research for every one page he actually wrote. Writing what you don't know is a great way to learn.
2. If I had followed the 'write what you know' rule I would have unleashed a 33k word story about how Celestia learned to fold a fitted sheet.
I'm saving this for inspiration and motivation.
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I resonate with both points. My next story will be about Rarity trying to get Sweetie Belle into a summer camp.
Good shit, Mister Dr Blankflank.
As soon as Fimfic adds an upvote function to their authors' blogs, I will complain ceaselessly to the site admins about how change frightens and infuriates me, and how I'm quitting the fandom forever. But I will also upvote/like/hashtag this blog post, too. Because it's pretty awesome. (And probably true.)
I like that! I think I'll add this to my blog post index.