What do I know?
Everything's been so 'surface' lately...it's like I can't connect. Things are just out of reach - or maybe they're just not there and swear I can see them from the periphery...
It's annoying. I feel like I am being scraped with sandpaper in my brain, or as if parts of my being are just wearing away. I suppose, eventually, I will be smooth. Not shiny and new....just care-worn and flat. I look in the mirror and I can see my age creeping up on me. I notice new wrinkles and although I never thought of myself as vain, I still want to keep the loss of my youth at bay. Playing for time, I guess, until I get to the point where I just stop....or time stops for me...
It's annoying. I feel like I am being scraped with sandpaper in my brain, or as if parts of my being are just wearing away. I suppose, eventually, I will be smooth. Not shiny and new....just care-worn and flat. I look in the mirror and I can see my age creeping up on me. I notice new wrinkles and although I never thought of myself as vain, I still want to keep the loss of my youth at bay. Playing for time, I guess, until I get to the point where I just stop....or time stops for me...
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'They' say 'write what you know'. I want to kick them in the gonads.
What do I know? I write when I FEEL like writing. I say what I need to say. I don't agonize, I don't apologize. So sue me. I have written about my life here. Not because I am trying to impress anyone and not because I think I am going to be the next great 'American Novelist '. I often write because I have no choice, because otherwise the voices I hear, the thoughts I have would drown out all my sanity.
How do writers truly know? How do they know the colour of the sky? The weight of a broken heart? The agony of injustice? Sure, some things have happened to them. But other than stringing pretty words together, the sky happens to everyone, as does the weather. Life and death happen to everyone. If writers were to only write what they 'know' we'd only have works of non-fiction.
Isn't writing about taking a chance? Isn't writing about soul-searching? Isn't writing about stripping yourself bare? It is for me....and THAT I do know. So I think that we can all take that flight of fancy, no matter what shape it takes, no matter the gender, the species, the creed. We can all become something we're not normally.
Labels: Life, Observations, Writing
posted by Colette at 7:30 PM
2 Comments:
"Write what you know" is one of the dumbest frackin' bits of literary advice that anyone ever came up with. Imagine how boring the world's works of literature would be if writers only wrote what they knew? And you are correct. In the end, do any of us really "know" anything? Or is the whole of reality just a collective hunch, a consensual illusion we all live within. Write what you want, when you feel it. We'll love it!
Perhaps the phrase was coined to stymie those who really aren't writers in their soul - they say, "I thought I'd give this a try" Yoda would be disappointed, "Do or do not. There is no try."
Likewise, we should throw down the phrase and look at it like many business people and economists - What I make up is what I know, and it doesn't have to match reality. Most economic theories seem to be playing themselves out as works of fiction anyway.
As for your age M'Love, you are still beautiful; inside and out, and you are certainly not flat.
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