Tip Tuesday — Write What?

You know that old saying “Write what you know”? Well I say PHOOEY! How boring would your writing life be if you only wrote what you knew? And if that were the way all writers thought, then we would have no Harry Potters or Mothers of Dragons. And I’d be very very concerned about Thomas Harris and Jeff Lindsay.

I think a better mantra is “Write what you want to know”. So if you are interested in writing a book series about an animal psychic or an historical novel about WWI it doesn’t mean that you have to have first hand experience with either. What it does mean is that you need to do some research to get all your facts and theories straight. You learn what you need to learn in order to write about a topic with some authority and accuracy.

Authors will sometimes write about a topic so that they can get a better understanding of it, be it love, parenthood, murder or getting on a stage and performing. Writing can very much be a way of exploring other things that you are interested in.

My point is to never let the fact that you know nothing about a topic stop you from learning about it and writing about it, whether it’s a novel about teen in the year 2035 or a non-fiction book about the local trees in your area.

Learn, then write. And then you will actually be writing what you know!