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We don't have the benefit of Dorothy Parker's wisdom as we sit around the Algonquin Round Table, but we do have something almost as good. The internet. Let's get a dialogue about writing started. I'll open with the first question, which is one I keep changing my mind about. Let me know what you think. Or if you have something you'd like someone to answer, send that question along too.
Write what you know. That's something you hear often. What does it mean to you? Do you think you can write about a bull fight if you've never seen one? Send your answers to louturn@aol.com and we'll post them on the site.
Here's another question maybe someone knows the answer to. When can I expect my phone call from Oprah?
From Veda Boyd Jones: In fiction, I write what I know. I write about my experiences, those of people I know, and I set novels and stories in places I've been so I can really capture the flavor of the place. All the insights that are given through character's thoughts are things I've learned through life. If I don't know something, I research. When I once used a TV news anchor as a main character, I spent a couple days at the TV station learning how news is put together. I took the female anchor to a two-hour lunch and pumped her about her life and how people react to her in the grocery store.
But in nonfiction, I do not write what I know. I really research nonfiction. Because I write a lot of work for hire, I've written biographies on people I've never even heard of. I try to live by the rule of three sources per fact (although it was five sources in graduate school). I use university libraries, interlibrary loan, published interviews with my subject, but very few websites, since I've found they must definitely be checked out. Anyone can put stuff out there in cyberspace.
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From Stephen P. Byers: My Creative Writing Workshops target aspiring or beginning writers. When I introduce "Write what you know," I'm always surprised how many people express the notion they don't know anything that would be of interest to anyone. There seems to be a preconceived idea that a story lies somewhere outside the experience of the author. Yet, when I explain the technique of free writing and give them a topic at random, everybody can write something. And what exactly do they write? They write what they know. It's an elementary idea that seems to surprise beginners. To close my workshop, I ask the participants for an evaluation. The most frequent comment recognizes how the technique of free writing opened the door to "write what you know."
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From Arline Chandler: In the classes I teach, I tell my students: "Write about something you care about deeply." For example, traveling in a tiny trailer could be similar to riding in a spaceship. Emotions are universal. The same fear that clutches the heart with icy fingers could be transferred from spying a snake slithering in an unexpected place to standing eye-to-eye with a raging bull in the ring--although I really could never imagine writing about a bull fight. Bull fighting doesn't passionately matter to me! I often use the late Pam Conrad's example of transferring the emotion of watching the moving van carry away her possessions as she emptied her Victorian dream home following a divorce to her heroine in "My Daniel" as she watched men cart away the dinosaur bones that her deceased brother had found and had thought would provide money to save their prairie farm. I also relate my own experience of being asked to write a WWII Veteran's story of being shot down and holding on in the ocean for five days before washing ashore and being taken in by natives. The story is one that needed to be written--but it was not my story. I have no background in the military, and I could not fairly write about the steel nerve our soldiers had to have to shoot the enemy. I could not suspend my compassion, so I declined to ghost write the book. The book was written and it is very good--but I did not feel that I could do it justice because battles and loss of life in war are disconcerting to me. Often we can learn enough to write about things we've not experienced, but if we lack the passion for the subject, our writing will falter.
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From Lou Turner: This question has bothered me for a long time. When I first started writing, I kept hearing "write what you know". I took it literally. I thought I could only write stories about things in which I had first hand experience. I grew up in the country, and had traveled very little. What could I possibly have to say? Then I started paying more attention to the books I read. Stephen King, hopefully, has never been in a dank sewer, running from an alien disguised as a clown, but I wondered after reading It. Larry McMurtry didn't live in the 1800's, or travel with the first cattle drives, but you'd think he did after reading Lonesome Dove. Then it dawned on me, write what you know must mean to be true to your writing, put your emotions and experiences into your fiction. Do your research, read about the places and things you want to write about, and then do a little conjuring. If you're writing about the Civil War, walk one of the battlefields, or maybe just the woods behind your house, and imagine what it must have been like. Think of how you would have felt facing the enemy that was once your brother. Put those emotions into your story, make your setting as authentic as you can, and conjure the rest.
Let's sit around the campfire and talk about writing...send me any article about the craft of writing you want to see posted on OWL's web. It could be about another "Write What You Know" piece, or anything of interest to writers.
louella@ozarkswriterleague.org
Literary Trivia
Let's have some fun. Tell me what these four sentences have in common.
We all make his praise.
I swear he's like a lamp.
"Has Will a peer?" I ask me.
Ah, I speak a swell rime.
E-mail your answers to louella@ozarkswritersleague.org
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
Stephen King
louturn@aol.com