The old adage is, 'Write what you know.' But if you only do that, your work becomes claustrophobic. I say, 'Write what you want to know.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
People always say, 'Write what you know', but I've always found that to be terrible advice. It's quite limiting, what you know.
I sometimes don't know what I'm writing when I start writing it, on some level.
You write about what you know, and you write about what you want to know.
I write to explore something that fascinates me, and I write the way I do because it is the only way I know how to write.
I've always thought that the balance between the side of my mind that knows what it is doing and the side that really hasn't got a clue has to be carefully maintained because if you write too knowingly then you get chilly, and if you write too unknowingly you write bollocks that nobody else can understand.
In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know.
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
I write about what I know.
When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control - say what they want to say, break structure.
Some people say, 'Write what you know.' My thing is, 'Write what scares you.'