What Does "Write What You Know" Really Mean?
Perhaps the greatest writing lesson I’ve received is to “write what you know.” This advice came from my mother, decidedly not a writer, but an artist in her own right, so it held weight. The mantra of “writing what you know” is one that can be tracked through literary history, across genres in fact. Even the most unrealistic pieces of science fiction pull from very real events within an author’s life. Take for example, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. It is largely based on Vonnegut’s experiences as a POW during the Allied bombing in Dresden, Germany in 1945 and carries anti-war themes throughout an otherwise out-of-this-world narrative. As writers, we find ourselves once more in a time that will shape and mold history. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep the globe, the words we place on paper about this past year, and the sure-fire implications still to be seen from it, will be how history remembers the time. And in this case, as in all cases of history-past, it is best to “write what we know.”
Literary Realism, a genre of fiction that represents subject-matter truthfully, first rose to popularity in the arts, literature, and musical world in the mid-19th century, particularly in the United States after the end of the Civil War. This kind of literature was a marked turn away from the Romanticism period that preceded it and is represented by famous writers like Mark Twain and his American classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Stephen Crane and his tale of the Bowery, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Upton Sinclair’s work, The Jungle, is perhaps one of the most well known works of Realism and Political Fiction, centering its narrative on the harsh working conditions seen in early-1900s America in working-class and immigrant neighborhoods in Chicago, though were often representative of those across the nation.
Moving throughout history, we see writers continue to tap into the elements of Literary Realism and pull from their own experiences, as well as the larger happenings of the world during that time. Both the World Wars produced classics like A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. Another writer during Hemingway’s reign was of course F. Scott Fitzgerald who described the opulent and immoral scene of 1920s America in his works like The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise. All of these novels were based heavily off of Hemingway’s time in World War I as an ambulance driver in Italy, as well as Fitzgerald’s experiences in New York in the 20s and his tumultuous marriage with Zelda Fitzgerald.
Movements in literature and art like those of The Harlem Renaissance and the various waves of feminism resulted in new and diverse writers being added to the scene. Arguably for the first time in American history, white American readers were exposed to voices like that of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, offering a look at the Black experience in America as these writers encapsulated their lived experiences into works of fiction, something that had not been done in such a capacity until The Harlem Renaissance. Feminist writers like Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath, and Audre Lourde shaped the feminist narrative and pulled from their experiences as women, and in Lourde’s case, women of color, to craft and create the works of the literature and fiction we still read and study today. These artistic movements in history can most certainly beg the question of whether history influenced writing or if the writing influenced our history. A case could be made for both, but this is why it’s so important to write the things we know and have seen and lived. It can only aid in the telling of history for those who come after us.
With all that being said, the question remains: how do we “write what we know” in a way that is creative, fictional, yet still truthful to who we are as writers and as people? First, allow yourself as a writer to find inspiration from wherever it may come. Something as simple as your favorite podcast or bedtime meditation may open a window of creativity for you. Pull your narrative from your lived experiences, just as all those famous writers listed in the previous paragraphs did to create their works. The writing you create based on your experiences can also span across time. Think about the life you lived as a child, who your parents were and are, the way your siblings shaped you, and incorporate these themes and truths into the characters you create as a writer. On a big picture scale, it is okay to use today’s news and current events in your writing. In fact, it’s normal, and it’s what has turned out some of the greatest pieces of literary fiction we have today. However, this past year has also been a traumatic look into so many truths that I think many of us have never experienced or really had to grapple with before. Ahead of spinning 2020 and 2021 into your works of fiction, allow yourself time to understand and heal from this past year. Write it out in a very nonfiction way in a journal or talk it out with friends, family, or therapists. Before you can put truth to paper about a time so close to us, you have to figure out what this past year meant to you. This can be said for any time in your life that maybe you are still grappling with. It’s important to allow our lives to influence our writing - that’s what will give us our writers’ voices - but to do so, you first have to understand how these experiences impacted you as a person. It is my belief that once we “know what we lived” we will then be able to “write what we know” like all the greats who came before us.
About Danielle Meyer
Danielle is currently living her 14-year-old-self's best life in New York City. She graduated in 2016 from Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and her heart is forever in Athens, Ohio. By day, she works in Public Relations and Communications, and by night is working to craft the perfect prose sentence in pursuit of becoming a published author. You can find her on Instagram @daniellemeyer13
