Someone once told me that you can only write what you know. Write what you know. It's too simple. As humans I think we have a tendency to want to make things as difficult as we possibly can. We don't understand simplicity. How can you write what you don't know? How could you explain something to someone when you didn't understand it in the first place? But then I looked at my stack of sci-fi stories and character summaries of people who were as different from me as they could get, and I understood what I thought I had known all along.
"But my life isn't interesting!" I would argue. "No one wants to hear about how I took out the garbage without being asked or how I almost crashed into the car in front of me because I was fiddling with the radio. Who cares?"
And I wondered why I had writer's block. I wondered why I could write page after page in my journal but nothing in my empty notebook. I couldn't understand how I could sit in class having fantastical daydreams and yet have no semblance of plot when I sat down to write.
Two truths remain: The only way to become a writer is to write, and the best way to make your writing appear real is to write what you know. When you write about a character or situation that you understand you are able to give your writing a depth that would not be possible otherwise. You understand what you are writing. You've been there and your reader can sense that. It is always obvious when a writer truly understands their subject matter. The words seem to pop and separate themselves from the superficial and the words become real.
Some of my favorite passages in books have been about absolutely nothing. Just pages and pages of every day boring things, but written so beautifully that I can't stop reading. Those are the books that I read over and over; the ones that I keep reading even when the plot has lost its sense of surprise. Those are the books that keep me up late into the night because I can't put them down. I can connect with the words. They are just so real, so honest that it is almost as though I am the one speaking, even if they are words I would never say, I believe that I could.
Write what you know. Write about the traumatic experience you had trying to get the toy out of the bottom of the cereal box. Write about that time in second grade when the boy behind you pulled your pigtails and you realize now that he must have liked you and you blush. Write about the words that you didn't have as you watched your best friend walk away from you. Chances are someone else has had a similar experience and they will love your writing for giving words to something they couldn't. Write what you know and your words will speak.
