Rule #1: Write what you know

As a writer, the first rule that is knocked into your head is the thought: write what you know. What a broad and generalized statement for there is so much that I could possibly know and ultimately write about. I can write about love that once was and then was lost, I can write about family and its frailty, I could write about the struggle into adulthood and finances that deem themselves your friend but really are the devil incarnate. I could write on science, history, holidays, friends, public school, pajama pants! Oh the list goes on and on.

What is amazing however is how you can take what you know and then branch out even further to those things in which you have not a clue. Not an inkling and create a world from the pedestal of knowledge.

Because I have loved and I have lost. I know that it is painful and can rouse the sincerest of angry emotions within me. I can explain the feeling of being a daughter and watching the divorce of my family redefine what it is to be a familial unit. I know what it is to fail in even a profession that I love and I know what it is to fear rejection in the deepest way. These are all feelings in life that I am well acquainted with. So how do I begin to write what I know? Where do I begin?

Furthermore, what can I write that is original rather than cliché? How do I define the line that I cross that gives me an idea that I am ‘talented’ worth my pound in gold? Or am I just another “wannabe,” “run of the mill,” “kill me now,” “gag me with a spork” writer from down the road? How do I make my voice on paper a distinct voice from all the noise that flows in and out of people’s hearts every single day? How do I get the world to hear me?

I will give you a piece of my small world and maybe then you will hear my voice above the static for the first time in your life. And hopefully when you hear my tone, you will like what little world I have created for you to see.

Or maybe you will hear it and disapprove, dislike, reject, or completely crush all my hopes of distinction. But in no way can you crush my voice for it has had its constant hum of existence for as long as I have breathed life and until I die this hum will drum on. And so will I constantly strive to divide myself from the hectic noise of everyday just so the world can get a taste of who I am. And maybe then the world will zero in and see me clearly. Maybe.

So creative writing starts with writing what I know. This is what I know. I am a small ant in a big hill. Walking the same paved out direction everyone else takes. But what makes me distinct from the rest is not how strong I am, or what I have done, or even that I paved a new and different way in which to walk but that when I walked down the same walkway I recorded it all along. And people that walk the same way can relate to me and understand the world I live in through the emotion and experiences I have felt and this was accomplished when they read it from me the very fingers that wrote it.

I know this to be a universal truth that a person can’t live alone. But even a person that has no one at least has books, magazines, television, entertainments, statues, knickknacks, games, and other things and all these media are but just emblems of humanity. They are a synthetic representation of what it is to be human (To live and breathe). Writing takes this and gives a person the ability to move past their present reality and transport themselves to another reality. And in that reality they can experience a different more comforting truth beyond their circumstance. Writing can change a life, and even save a life. For it is the doorway for a person bound by stress, pain, and circumstance to reach out to a place in which those chains can no longer bind them. How beautiful it would be that someone would read my work and free themselves from the day to day hum of reality. If they but just tasted the distinct hum of my voice maybe they could see a different reality and live free.

So I will write what I know, because writing what I know will help someone else see a different world of possibility. Writing is so much more than words; it is a different world of possibilities. And it always takes you on a different journey.