Write What You Know

So I’ve decided to give up the drama that usually engulfs my life and redirect my energy to something more productive like writing.  By now it’s a well known fact that I want to be writer and I’ve even started writing my novel for like the 500^th time.  I’m always good with the starting part, it’s the finishing part that seems to be my Achilles heel but tonight as I was working on my most recent story, I realized I might be going in the wrong direction.

Mark Twain said to write what you know.  Sounds easy huh?  Well sure it does sound easy but it’s not actually that simple.  I have a lot of opinions and over 29 years I had to have gained some sort of valuable knowledge but every time I put pen to paper, I realize just how little I really do know. 

Take my current project for example.  Ultimately it’s a love story.  Of course there is more to it but in the end it’s definitely a typical, predictable, and always crowd pleasing style of story.  Tonight I was brainstorming my idea and trying to figure out where it was going but I was having some trouble.  The whole concept just seemed bland and over done.  There was no gimmick or hook to make my story stand out from the thousands of other boy meets girl, happily ever after tales that reside on bookshelves around the world. 

 I decided to step away from working for a little bit and took break to enjoy one of the many cheesy TV shows that I enjoy.  Go figure that a little Secret Life of the American Teenager was exactly what I needed!  In the opening of the episode, one of the characters talks about writing a how to type of book and is told that you have to be successful at the thing you are writing about in order for it to sell.  Translation – write what you know.

I’ve been trying to write this perfect, magical story about true love and happy endings but what do I know about that?  If you’ve read my blog, then you know that I am anything but an expert when it comes to matters of the heart.  How can you write you a love story when you’ve never lived a love story?  It’s not to say that I one day I won’t have my very own love story but today isn’t quite that so why am not writing the kind of story I do know about?

You see, sometimes we are so eager to write the story about what we want that we end up missing the story we are writing right now.  It’s easy to imagine our hearts desires and fantasize about how great they would be but maybe if we stop worrying about writing the perfect tale, we can see that the story unfolding in front of us is pretty great.  Maybe we even know more than we think.

“Write your story as it needs to be written.  Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can.  I’m not sure that there are any other rules.  Not ones that matter.” – Neil Gaiman