Writing what you know

[changeling]

There are lots of people who tell you that (a) you should write what you know; and (b) you can only write when you've had sufficient life experience like this is some sort of Windows 3.1 game which raises you a level and gives you a new spell when you've achieved experience points from slaying monsters.

I think that's a load of bollocks. Of course, experience helps your writing. But what also helps is practising your writing. And coincidentally enough, once you've amassed some life experience, you also have usually improved your writing through practise - or so one would hope.

I'm not saying that having life experience isn't going to improve your stories; it will. What I get angry about is the snide insinuation that you can't possibly write because you haven't accumulated enough experience. It all depends on the sort of story you're writing as well, of course. Someone famous (or possibly just in a webcomic...no, I'm pretty sure it was someone famous in a Sandman graphic novel) once said something along the lines of being a member of the human race...I can't really remember the quote, unusually enough for me. What my point is here is that yes, perhaps I haven't lived a life that's quite as rich and fulfilling as writers who've been journalists and undertakers and waiters, but I have lived a life. Almost nineteen years so far, and that's a long time to be at any job.

At the moment I don't really consider myself suffering from a lack of life experience. These days you don't need to experience life, you can get the same idea just from watching a lot of television and movies; preferably those like Big Brother and Survivor which claim to be "reality shows." Of course, the logic of people thrown into a highly contrived and artificial environment as "reality" is still strange to me, but obviously I'm one of the strange ones. Getting back to the point, I just spent my childhood reading voraciously as a sort of substitute for life experience. And you know what? It worked, to a certain degree. Two pieces of work I wrote that I'm most proud about were written in grades six and seven, when I was still innocent(ish) and naive(er than I am now). Those of you clamouring for the need for life experience should remember the Brontës, and Wuthering Heights, arguably one of the greatest works of English literature.

Comments

Exactly.

[cairnsy.livejournal.com]

Hell, I've never been in a homosexual relationship or ridden a broom (well, successfully, at least), but why do people question my right to write the first but not the second? Am I not allowed to write about fandoms that take place in a country I've never visited, or that took place after/before I was born? Pft. Utterly stupid comment, and it riles me when people sprout it off in an attempt to sound articulate and wise. We have an imagination for a reason.

Re: Exactly.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Rah. People who don't write and tell me what to write or what not to write piss me off.