Write What You Know?

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I recently had lunch with a good friend whom I had not seen for many years.  We discussed all the usual things: family, friends, the world going to hell, memories of our work together in the "old days" and, finally, what we were really doing.  I told him that I had been trying to write a novel for some time but had become a bit bogged down in recent months.

These words seemed to strike a chord.  Without any hint of irony, he told me that he was also trying to write a novel--about a British regiment fighting in France during the First World War--and that he had come to a grinding halt after four chapters.  I was secretly thinking that getting bogged down in a novel about the First World War would be a real asset.  You would definitely be channeling the conditions that your characters confronted.

We ruminated on how and why we had chosen the stories we were trying to tell and, in particular, whether we had chosen our subjects wisely.  We were definitely not writing about things that we had experienced.  My friend asked whether we might be encountering difficulties because we had ignored that familiar admonition to aspiring writers: "Write what you know”.

Courtesy Wikipedia

I am not sure where this old conker came from but I think Mark Twain has been blamed for giving advice of this nature.  Huckleberry Finn?

Whatever its derivation, I began to think about the dubious wisdom of this advice.  I was certainly hoping that the authors of American Psycho and Game of Thrones had not been drawing on their personal experience.  Wasn't novel writing about using your imagination?

But accepting Mark Twain's advice for a moment, could this be the real problem with my novel?  Had I strayed into realms way beyond my experience and knowledge?   As if to answer my question, the weekend after that lunch, the New York Times Sunday Book Review contained two separate articles by Zoe Heller and Moshin Hamid which discussed: 'Write What You Know': Helpful Advice or Idle Cliche?

Zoe Heller had written a story in grade school about an 18th century highwayman.  She was stung by the diplomatically worded criticism from her teacher that she should 'write what you know'.  So, what about science fiction and fantasy writing she asked?  Was she to be limited to subjects bounded by her sex, age and race?

It was only many years later that she understood the deeper meaning of that advice.  By all means, write about an 18th century highwayman; but draw upon your own life experiences, put yourself into the shoes of that highwayman and what robbing a coach might entail.  Everyone has experienced fear, excitement, danger, impulse, things going awry--use all this to illuminate your dashing highwayman.

Moshin Hamid had a fascinating insight:

"It may be that the DNA of fiction is, like our own DNA, a double helix, a two-stranded beast. One strand is born of what writers have experienced. The other is born of what writers wish to experience, of the impulse to write in order to know. Fiction comes into existence when these two strands are knitted together".

I like this thought--you may have to write in order to discover what you know.  As he says:

"I also write about things I haven’t experienced. I’ve written from the point of view of a woman, of a global surveillance system, of a writer who is being beheaded. I write these things because I want to transcend my experiences. I want to go beyond myself. Writing isn’t just my mirror, it’s my astral projection device".

This is much more liberating and, indeed, an invitation, on the surface, to write what you don't know.  In a very subtle way, you are opening a door into knowledge and thoughts that you did not know were there until you began the process of writing.  Maybe Mark Twain should have said: "Write until you know".

Consult: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/books/review/write-what-you-know-helpful-advice-or-idle-cliche.html

Courtesy latimes.com

A couple of weeks later, once again in New York Times Sunday Review of Books, the question of 'write what you know' cropped up in a book review by Harlan Coben of Robert Galbraith's new book The Silkworm.  

We now all know that Robert Galbraith is none other than J.K. Rowling.  His/her new book is a thriller that takes place in the rarefied but poisonous atmosphere of the publishing world.  Here is Harlan Coben's venture into the 'write what you know' discussion:

"As written by Rowling, “The Silkworm” takes “write what you know” and raises it to the 10th power. Is this crime fiction, a celebrity tell-all, juicy satire or all of the above? The blessing/curse here is that you turn the pages for the whodunit, but you never lose sight that these observations on the publishing world come from the very top. This makes complete escape, something mandatory for a crime novel, almost impossible — but then again, who cares? If you want a more complete escape, pick up another book. Reading Rowling on writing is delicious fun".

See: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/books/review/the-silkworm-by-j-k-rowling-as-robert-galbraith.html?_r=0

So, this might be a situation where writing what you know can get in the way of your story or the genre you have chosen.  But as Coben points out, who the hell cares when someone of J.K. Rowling's stature is providing some insights--however diverting--into a world that she knows all too well.

Courtesy commons.wikimedia.org

One other thought on 'write what you know'.  A few years ago I met an author who has published several critically acclaimed novels.  One of those novels is set right here in fair D.C.  I hesitantly outlined the plot of my putative novel and asked whether he thought it was too way out (meaning was it too far beyond my own experience to be authentic).  Absolutely not, he said.

The novel that he had recently published was about the intelligence community.  It was a subject that he had always been interested in but did not know all that much about. However, he intimated that detailed research can conquer any lack of knowledge on any given subject.  He admitted to being an avid researcher and loved that aspect of novel writing above all others (except, perhaps, getting published).

He had set up interviews with all sorts of people in the intelligence community and they had agreed to speak to him when he told them that he was a mere novelist, not a snooping journalist. In fact, they had gladly spilt the beans about all sorts of interesting happenings.  Strangely, they kept asking whether they would (could?) be in his novel.  On one occasion, he waited two years for a particular interview and only then felt able to complete his novel.  This guy really wanted to know what he was writing about.

I derived a lot of hope from our conversation.  Even though I have no direct experience of many of the matters I am writing about, research and talking to people who really do know, may well give me the ability to write about things in a convincing manner.  Throw in some of your shadier human experiences and warped fantasies and it all comes together.  That's the theory at least.

Why have I bothered you with this long exposition on writing what you know?  Well, in the previous blog, I promised to tell you what I was going to be writing about in Writer's Block.  Yes, you guessed it already.  I will be writing about what I know.  (This could be a very short blog).

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Without being too egocentric, I decided that I would write down some funny, strange, weird, troubling or positively scary things that have happened to me over the course of my life.  All in the interest of getting my authorial juices flowing.  I mean, if I write about some of my own experiences, I should be OK because I was there at the time and would know what was going on, right?

And maybe in the writing process, I will come to know things that I didn't know I knew.  (Is Donald Rumsfeld creeping in here somewhere?).  Or, maybe, remember some things that I had forgotten--like when you look at an old photograph and suddenly you receive a stream of other images connected with that day or time or place that have been buried, just waiting for the right time to resurface. A touch of Deliverance?

To protect the innocent and to head off any libel suits, I have decided not to use real names and to be fairly non-specific about dates and places.  This is a story-telling exercise not an attempt at an autobiography in twelve blogs (although that is a pretty good idea).  I promise you that my stories are true--to the extent that conscious memory is ever true or even vaguely accurate.  The truth is that "memory" is just your own recollection of what might have happened.  How else could Governor McDonnell have mounted such a ludicrous defense in his corruption trial?

So here goes.  If this blog should suddenly stop one day, you will know that I have gone back to my novel and that it will soon be published under my nom de plume, Rider Block.