Write a story about tying my shoes, making Kraft Dinner, drawing a blood sample from the femoral artery?
I know how to do that stuff. Am I therefore limited to writing only about those things?
What about fantasy and sci-fi? I'm certain Frank Herbert never drank bile from the sand worms of Arrakis. Yet when he describes a Bene Gesserit sister writhing in the throes of spice agony, we feel it, we believe it.
Write what you know is an oversimplification of a complex idea. I think it means write with resonance.
Stories that resonate strike universal chords within the most defamiliarized of experiences.
A story about learning to tie your shoes might be boring. However, that universal experience would resonate with me in a description of a feral child having his feet horned into shoes for the first time, and staring in apprehension at those straggling laces. It would throw me straight back to kindergarten. I'd recall my own childish uncertainty in the face of shoelaces and adult expectation.
The spice agony described in the Dune Saga might strike a chord of familiarity within those of us who've recreationally/medicinally consumed mind-altering substances (I'm not pointing fingers, you know who you are).
So that's what I'm thinking about these days.
Resonance, universality, and sand worms.
The little truths that bind us all.
Absolutely! If you write about what you know and have great passion, your writing will truly shine! for me ... it's chocolate and travel. So, my book is about chocolate travel.
ReplyDelete