Know What You're Writing

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This month's optional question: Since it's back to school time, let's talk English class. What's a writing rule you learned in school that messed you up as a writer?

I can't remember where I first heard this "rule." It may not have even been in an English class and it's just one of those things that you always hear as a writer, but I've always hated it:

Write what you know. 

As a fiction writer, I've always found this advice incredibly stupid. If all I did was write what I know, it would be some pretty boring writing. While I've certainly written poetry from a personal perspective, most of my fictional characters have been nothing like me. Writers are always reaching outside of themselves to craft their stories, sometimes creating entire worlds that don't exist. If we only stuck to what we know, we wouldn't get very far. 

That being said, I think under the surface level, there is actually some good advice in this phrase. But to really understand it, I would want to rephrase it:

Know what you're writing.

This could cover so many different aspects that are important to writing a story. You want to know where your story is going (unless you're a pantser like me...), what you want it to be about, what kind of message you want to tell. You want to make sure you do your research for anything that you don't know when you start, whether that's a setting, the demographics for your characters, or really any topic that comes up in the story that you aren't already an expert on. 

It's important to at least have some idea about what you're writing when you start, even if you don't always know where it's going. But I think it's important to be aware of every aspect and be open to changing things when you know you got it wrong or it isn't working. 

So if you only wrote what you know, you're limiting yourself in what you can achieve. But if you don't know what you're writing, you may be stumbling blindly through that limitless space.