Write What You Don’t Know
Write what you know: I believe in this proverb. If you don’t know what you’re writing about, you are going to generate problems. Unless of course you’re very good at making up things that sound plausible, in which case you’re in good shape.
Still, I like to learn new things. So I’ll often get really interested in a subject, learn everything I can about it, and then write about it. Learning about something and then writing about it tends to cement it in my mind — like how they say that they best way to learn something is to eventually teach it.
And as a writer you are constantly trying to find thematic meaning or clarity in the things you write about. The world is an extremely complex place, arguably without meaning unless human beings come along to create that meaning themselves. Evil is banal. People are murdered for no clear reason or for ridiculous reasons — fifty bucks. Road rage. Who knows.
When I learn something I invariably attach meaning to it. It gets added to my database and marked with emotion or memory or something. I think that the meaning that’s attached is as important as the piece of knowledge itself. That’s the part of me that’s making the connection to the outside world.
My Work in Print
Year Zero
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.com
Cowboy Versus Samurai
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.comFor a complete list of books containing my work, please click here.
One Comment
I think my last 2 years at ucla were about writing what I didn’t know. And reading pompous authors who also wrote about what they didn’t know, then trying to make it palatable. What was that expression? You can’t polish a turd? Mister man taught me that.