(no subject)

[pantryslut]

In lieu of that writing meme I was grousing about earlier, how about this:

“In essence, Hemingway’s dictum of writing about what you know has become an excuse for avoiding risks. Since Hemingway wrote about a wide mix of people, some American, some not, it’s clear the great writer wasn’t advising those who took up his craft to isolate themselves from the world… . What you know might be something you took the time and went somewhere to discover.”

This Stanley Crouch quote inspired me to this thought: “write what you know” is akin to “Do what thou will” -- know and will in these contexts have a very specific and nonstandard definition.

Discuss?

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I think worth attaching to that thought is a comment of Samuel Delany's, which I would probably be able to attribute better had I not read all his essay collections in one big lump about four years back, to the effect that the rpoblem with "write what you know" is the difficulty of writing things that you know well, such as things you do every day, in ways to make them new for people to whom they are.

Indeed...

[imnotandrei.livejournal.com]

You've hit on something that always bugged me -- at least, once I discovered research and stopped relying on making stuff up out of whole cloth. ;)

Perhaps "Write what you've learned"? But that makes it sound almost like an invocation to a moral. "Write what you're interested in" is another variation I've heard, which may be closer.

[manomano.livejournal.com]

Write what you know has become a license for self-involvement.