Write What You Know...If You Dare!

“Write what you know.” How often have you heard that statement or one like it?

  • You can’t write about a black man unless you’re black...and a man. You can’t write about women if you’re not a woman.

  • You can’t write about pilots; you lack cockpit experience.

  • You can’t write about a gay man or a lesbian because you’re neither. You can’t write about someone who’s twice your age.

  • You can’t write about someone who’s half your age.

  • You can’t write about someone who comes from a different background, culture or country.

How often have statements like that frustrated you? Stifled you?

Consider this: How much research do you think Leonardo da Vinci did before he painted The Last Supper? The Bible tells the story, but it offers no physical description of that scene or of those individuals.

Yet da Vinci knew The Last Supper. He knew it as well as if not better than any biblical source. He knew it in his heart. Not in his head, which would have cautioned him against attempting anything so audacious and out of his experience. Yet he had lived the emotions he represented, and those emotions are the only truth that matters in that masterful painting.

So you have never experienced the discrimination a black woman or gay man might have felt? Have you ever been attacked for who you are? Have you ever been denied what you believed was rightfully yours? Have you ever felt your personhood and humanity under attack?

No? Think back to your childhood. Think back to the emotions of childhood, to the bullies in the schoolyard, to the adults who criticized you. Do more than think back. Relive and reexperience those emotions.

You have lived some of those same emotions you feel you dare not describe in someone else.

Accept the dare. Step up to the challenge. You owe it to yourself at least to try. For if any character — however far removed from your life and lifestyle — comes to you and demands that his or her story be told through you, then all you can do is trust that whatever you need lies within you.

Of course, research may be required. Remember, though, that unless you are writing a dry recitation of history, it is the emotions that will touch your readers, that will affect them, that will move them to deeper places within themselves. And we all — whether we’re black, white, green or purple — draw from the same pool of emotions.

If you can give yourself permission to tap into that pool within you, you will always write what you know. For all you need to know lies inside of you. Now. At this moment.

Write what you know — what you know in your deepest heart. Write your fire. Write your truth.

The only knowledge that is unique to you is the knowledge of your heart, the wisdom of your soul, the force of your passion. Write from those places that no one else can and you will touch readers in ways that no one else can.

Go ahead and write what you know...if you dare.

Try This...

Using the Muse Stream technique I describe in all my books for writers, write from any or all of these key phrases:

  • I know fear...

  • I know humiliation...

  • I know betrayal...

  • I know what it feels like to be different...

  • I know what it feels like to be attacked...

  • I know what it feels like to feel trapped...

  • I know what it feels like to be judged...

  • I know what it feels like to be shamed...

  • I know what it feels like to betray...

  • I know what it feels like to attack...

  • I know what it feels like to judge...

  • I know what it feels like to shame...

  • I know what it feels like to humiliate...

  • I know what it feels like to...

Let it be a story from your childhood, from your adolescence or from your present. Or let it be a creation of your inner vision. Whichever it is, write what you know. Write from your heart, write what your Muse tells you. Surrender to that knowingness and let the true emotions, true passion and true truth of your soul be unleashed onto the page.

Alternatively, download up a copy of The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers and let the meditation “Write the Feeling” (Track #6) help guide you through the experience.

Adapted from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write
© 2008, 2024, 2020 Mark David Gerson

Need help writing from the inside out or with any other aspect of your writing journey? Here are some resources…