Random Musings

What do you know?

Week 57 / Prompt 6 - Do you agree with the adage "write what you know"?

Off the cuff, I want to say that I agree with this saying, for several reasons. First, it is probably easier to write about things that you are knowledgeable about. I'm one that has a really hard time writing about things that I don't know anything about, and will often do a lot of research about a topic to ease those gaps. You could probably make stuff up about a topic, but I hate to think your made-up work might be read by someone who thinks you know what you are talking about and takes it for gospel.

On a different level, you might try writing in a genre you don't know much about. This could either lead you to being completely ignored because you didn't match the genre, or you could open up a whole new side of the genre that no one had done before and yet it works! That is probably one of the few traditional methods that I think it is okay to Not "write what you know." Of course, knowing when you will succeed in that method is almost impossible..

When I think about it more, however, I realize that my favorite genre to write in is Fantasy. And most of the time, this genre is everything but writing what you know. In Fantasy, you create worlds that are totally different than this one, you incorporate magic and beings that could never work in our world. You can't truly know anything about these items or worlds, because the whole point is you make them up! So how in the world can you "write what you know?" Well, you can't. Not really. You can create outlines that might help you stay on your own track, but really you aren't writing what you know. And that is the point.