Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Is "Write about What You Know" Good Advice?

Josh Henkin in the Glimmer Train bulletin:

“Every writer is faced with the same question: do you write about what you know or what you don't know? Some of my writing students, particularly my undergraduates, err to one extreme or the other. They write simply what they know, which is a transcript of Friday night's keg party, or simply what they don't know, which is Martians. What they need to do—and here I'm quoting a former writing teacher of mine—is write what they know about what they don't know or what they don't know about what they know. In other words, they want the advantages of both closeness and distance.”

Read the rest here.

Work-in-Progress

DC-area author Leslie Pietrzyk explores the creative process and all things literary.