"Write what you know"

It's a bit of advice I remember from a creative writing class I took one semester, back in the Days of South Carolina when I probably used it, or tried to use it at least, as a vehicle to transport my mindspace out of my physical/social location.

I'll never forget the context in which the advice was offered. One of the students shared a piece of work wherein the main character was stoned beyond belief on an insane admixture of drugs: something like smoking a ounce of pot and then taking 3 hits of acid and then some X, and finishing it off with an 8-ball and a shot of heroin. Maybe there was even a fifth of tequila involved. Hell, why not? The listeners with experience of at least some those substances sat there, incredulous. After a moment of dead silence, the teacher kindly said that the author had made a brave attempt, but a good rule for writing is to write what you know.

That's always stuck with me somehow. It sounds right in line with my whole overall attitude of striving to be as authentic as possible. But I have to admit, that thought in my head feels like a brick. A big, heavy brick with a note tied to it that says "don't go there." Hmmmm.

And I remember a comment I've seen on facebook lately somewhere, where a person said (in response to the suggestion of writing what one knows), that if we all did, we wouldn't have among other things good fiction. I think that's absolutely right. I'm not much on doing fictioney writing - maybe because I don't give myself much of a chance - but as I imagine it anyway, I visualize an author having points in the text that connect up with something he or she knows. A character's motivation, elements of a setting, a relationship. But these points are like springboards that the writer touches down upon before launching up into creative space. I visualize it as a kind of verbal, bouncey, floatey dance. That sounds kinda fun, actually.

But as I sit here, mulling with my coffee and my morning attempt to unlock my fingers, I wonder what it really means to write what one knows.

On one hand, I think the only thing I really know is my own point of view (although there are of course thoughtful scholars out there who would sound caution about believing we know even that, but I'm not buying it). But god, doesn't that get boring after a while? And I think about this bloggedey-note space that I'd like to use as a creative area, and I'd like it to be something more than a glorified diary. Or journal. Or whatever they call those things these days.

I think maybe that what the "rule" Write What You Know can be best taken to mean, is to write believably. Oh, great, that's much more transparent!

Try again: what does THAT mean? Well, at a first approximation I'd guess it means that where possible, to do your research. What is the emotional IQ of an 8-year-old girl? What were the living conditions for the average 20-something man in early 20th-century Barcelona?

That sounds like the easy part, though. Because presumably a person doesn't want to write a bit of fiction as though constructing an encyclopedia entry. At least, I don't think I would. I think it also means having something of a rich sense of possibilities, a good sense of where elements that maybe start off quite real can be readily pushed and bent so that the reader would trustingly and joyfully go with, and get that "suspension of disbelief" thing going on and follow along down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass or on the Hogwarts Express.

That good sense of possibilities sounds like the hard part. Where does such a sense come from? Are you born with it? Does is come from practice? Both? Beats me. All I know, is that I'll have to stew on that for a while, because now my brain hurts.