As a novice writer, I am aware of the importance of learning from the wisdom of those who have travelled this path before me.
But there is one piece of advice that I cannot and will not follow as it stands.
Not every aspiring writer knows what it is he or she wants to write. Some of us have a story that has been running around in our heads for weeks, months, years even. For others, there is a sense of having something to say, something of import and relevance, the urge to tell a story only you can, in the way only you can. But there is a sense of confusion, of not knowing what this story should be.
In desperation, these muddled souls will ask seasoned writers that much bandied about question. What should I write?
And pat comes the answer. Write what you know.
Writers are observant creatures. We are meant to live our lives paying attention to the minutiae most people gloss over or simply do not notice, and make sense of it in our stories, to make a larger comment on the human condition.
As such, we are meant to find meaning in the things around us - the places we visit, the people we meet, the experiences we have. And this can be a great treasure trove worth mining for inspiration and ideas. We are all coloured by the unique set of circumstances that make up our lives, as well as the way we react and interact with these experiences. There are, therefore, stories, that we and we alone can tell.
So as an adage goes, it’s not totally off base. Write what you know. Look around you, find the things that make your life experience unique and interesting, and write the story only you can write. All good advice.
Where I have an issue with said advice is in the implied restrictiveness of it. There is a hidden caveat implied that suggests we can only write what we know. And this is so wrong, so off base, it gets my goat up every time.
If I were to adhere to this implied canard, I would and should only write stories informed by my own experiences as a woman, who grew up in India, had a maddeningly normal childhood in a loving family, and a fairly average life arc.
This is not to say there are no stories I can mine from these particular characteristics of my life. Not so. Every human life is rich with enough material to write hundreds of thousands of stories, and mine is no different.
I just don’t want these to be the only stories I write.
I want to be able to write stories about anything and everything. About faraway places I have never been, times before and after my own. About the ecstatic highs and miserable lows I haven't personally experienced. I want to walk in the shoes of people who are so unlike me, so removed from my sense of who I am, there is absolutely nothing in common between us.
The crux of the issue boils down to one simple word - authority. Can I write, with any sense of authority, about things I know nothing about, since I have never experienced them myself?
It is not an easy question, but to my mind there is a perfectly valid answer. Will the authority I write with measure up to the genuine authority someone with first hand knowledge has? Not even close. But can I, with sufficient common sense, a relentless amount of research and an amplified degree of empathy bring myself close to having some level of authority about what I write?
The answer has to be yes. If not, we wouldn't have all these wonderful books about the past, a time before our time. Or about the future, which we are yet to see. We wouldn't have stories about all these places we have never been to, or people we have never met.
“Write what you know” rings true only if you believe, as I do, that you can learn, you can discover, you can imagine, you can believe.
You have to do the work. Of learning, and understanding. Only then can you really know anything.
And then, and only then, can you begin to write.