Good morning guys,
Yes, I know this one is late and I apologize. I had been doing so well on keeping up the schedule and not missing a single day, but I was so tired this weekend with my day job I honestly didn’t even realize I hadn’t written another post until it was already too late and I had to leave for work. So I am sorry about that, my brain has just been in so many different places this weekend. There has been a case of harassment in my workplace and I’ve been helping a couple of coworkers out with that this weekend and making sure the necessary people were notified about this issue. So to say that my mind has been elsewhere is an understatement. It has been in several elsewheres lately. But I am back this morning and feeling better about the whole situation and I believe it’s being handled.
Okay so I’m sure we’ve all heard the advice about writing what you know. Now I don’t believe in this ‘writing rule’ or that this is even helpful advice. And I believe this way for a variety of reasons which I will go over today. Now, if I were to give anyone this advice I would be being a hypocrite because I don’t follow it.
First of all, I do understand what people mean when they say to write what you know, it means bringing in your knowledge about the world you live in and about certain topics/people/emotions/ways of thinking into your writing. Now, I don’t do this.
My reasons:
I don’t know much/haven’t experienced much: - I am young, but people still enjoy my writing and think it’s good and diverse amoung so many other things. And being young means I haven’t actually experienced a lot of the world yet. I haven’t traveled much, I haven’t met tons of different people, but yet I can write so many varieties of people. So I can’t write about experienced that I’ve never had, yet I do and I can do it well because if I don’t fully understand it, I research to learn about it.
Research what you don’t know so you can learn: - If you don’t know something or don’t understand it, but you still want to write about it then you do your research and you learn. If I don’t know something I research it. So I’m starting by writing about an idea that I have no knowledge in because it interests me, then I go on to do the necessary research that I’m going to need in order to finish writing about it.
Ask for help if you need it: -If I don’t feel comfortable writing something from a different perspective, say a male one, I will ask people who are male for advice about something I don’t know about. I don’t know something and so I ask for help so I can know it and portray it accurately. This is a form of research.
Imagination/picturing the situation as if it was happening to you: - This helps me a lot and allows me to write damaged characters even if they are damaged in a way that I am not. I imagine what I would do if I were them in that situation, how I would feel, the things I might do or how I might act, what I might say. Now, this being said, I can’t actually simulate it properly, having not been put directly into that situation. Here is where I take a chance that someone would do those things and I ask around for reference about situations like that. Because I cannot realistically know exactly how I would act unless I was ever actually in that situation because often times, the way we think we would act wouldn’t be how we actually would.
Emotions: - Now, for the emotions thing, I do think that it’s accurate, but only because every human has or is going to experience every emotion, they just are. It’s life. We all experience emotions and their effects on our bodies. But this is a given and cannot be helped. But if I do need help describing an emotion that I’m not as familiar with, again I research it and how it affects people. This also goes for different ways of thinking. I get online and I do my research. I will research everything I don’t know about or understand if I’m writing about it. But I usually don’t understand it first.
I’m not saying that people can’t write what they know, but what I choose to write about, I often know little or nothing about it until it comes time to start writing and I turn to research. Now, the only issue I would have is if people skip the research, then you’re just going on blind faith that what you’re writing is true and accurate. Which could end up biting you if you’re wrong and people don’t like it.
But I believe you can definitely write about things you don’t know or haven’t experienced or write realistic characters you’ve never met. As long as you do some research and be sure you’re accurate in your portrayal. I write like this, I think, because I like to learn so much. If I don’t know something and I get an idea to write about it, then it means it’s time to finally learn about it.
Here are a few examples:
How to cremate a body
what burning alive feels like
what drowning feels like
murder mystery plot structure
what being shot feels like
sistus inversus (flipped organs in the body - not occurring in the normal places, but causing no harm)
These are things I had no knowledge of before researching, but I found myself using them anyway. I wanted to use these ideas so I needed to research to make sure they were even possible.
There are very few things I do know anything substantial about so if I stuck with only writing about what I know, then I would be writing very boring stories and no one would want to read them. So I choose to pick ideas that inspire research to know more about them and it fuels my creativity to write about those ideas. I even write about romantic things I’ve never experienced because I imagine what it would be like.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be stepping on some toes with this one, but I’m just telling my truth. This is what I believe. Take it or leave it.
Well, that will be it for me guys, but thank you so much for hanging out and again I am sorry about Sunday’s missed post, but this one is here to make up for that. A little late, but better late than never right? I will see you all very soon. Lots of love! Happy reading and writing. Until next time, bye for now.
Celine Rose Marie
