Beyond “Write What You Know”
“Write what you know” is popular writing advice—so popular that even non-writers can quote it. I have mixed feelings about it.
On the one hand, there’s real joy and possibility to be found in writing from—and learning to investigate and celebrate—your own lived experience. Writing about my own errands and routines and hobbies, writing from my own hometown and body, helps me bring an attentive and curious mind to my daily life. And, as a reader, I love to encounter work full of the depth and nuance that familiarity brings.
On the other hand, “write what you know” sounds an awful lot like “stick to what you know”. But if you only write about what you already know, how will you ever learn anything new? How will you step into mysteries and uncertainties and unleash your Negative Capability? How will you step back into a beginner’s mindset and discover new images and techniques? How will you get out of explaining mode and into exploring mode?
I like to write what I know, but I like to write into unknowns even more. Research helps me stay curious and open to new ideas. I write to learn about science and history, about the nervous system, about the Cold War, about spies and submarines, about the first woman to swim the English Channel. And then I look at the poems or essays I’ve drafted. I admit I don’t know everything about my subject matter, but I work with my uncertainty rather than pretending it doesn’t exist. Are there gaps in my knowledge—words or dates or concepts I need to look up? (Yay, more research!) Or are there gaps in the record—places to imagine my way through? (Yay, more writing!)
This writing into the unknown can work even on the level of an individual word. Too often I see writers apologize for putting a less familiar word in a draft; “I don’t know what this word is doing here,” they’ll say, “I’m not even 100% sure what it means.” But the word is there because it called to the writer’s instincts, it sounded its way into the poem, and now it’s a doorway to a new dimension. For instance, maybe you throw the word “radical” into the poem to describe a choice and then visit the dictionary and realize you’ve brought in surgery and chords of music and groups of atoms and a handful of roots from which a tree might grow. Where will the poem go now?
In honor of back-to-school season, I invite you to let go of writing what you know. Write to explore, to learn, to discover. Write your way into knowing what you don’t know. Write in ways that reflect your ongoing learning and experiencing and digesting of life. Write tunnels through the inner world, open the door to surprise.
