What if writing what you know doesn't give you joy?

Good afternoon!

Every creative writing teacher I ever had told me to "write what you know."  That was a problem for me because when I was growing up my life was so completely boring, nothing ever happened.  What did I know?  I knew about going to church every Sunday and I knew about stressing about math every day of my life.  I knew about my dad being my teacher and I knew my mother was unhappy most of the time, but she covered well and people loved her. They still do.

The highest drama I ever knew about what the time our neighbors shot over their limit of geese and they came over and gave us a dead goose, complete with feathers. My mom has a great story about how we got those feathers off the bird (we didn't, some students of my dad, a good farm family, did) but the drama of "will we eat this, won't we eat this" dragged on for many weeks until we had a drawing at the family Christmas. My aunt and uncle won it.  Family legend has it that they dumped it at the side of the road on the way home.

Writing what you know isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Would there be a Star Wars, a Star Trek, Lord of the Rings or a Game of Thrones if the authors had simply written what they knew about life from their own experience?

Would there be a "Gone With the Wind?"  "Wuthering Heights?"

Sure, we MIGHT still have Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, but I doubt even those books would be around if every author held to the law of "write what you know."

People don't always want to READ what they know.  Celebrities have best sellers all the time. Why? Because we can pick up Dennis Rodman's biography and empathize?  Not a chance.  We read to be entertained.  To gain some knowledge.  To escape from our lives and into the world someone else created. 

For me, I write to entertain, and to escape.  I'm in a period of my life where writing what I know gives me no peace, gives me no pleasure.  I turn to a world I built, a world away from my real life.  Sure, I draw on my own experiences, for my characters or for time and place settings.  I don't know the first part of being a musician in Nashville, but I've seen people who want to do just that.  I've thought about what it's like to chase a dream that's just out of reach, and I can translate THAT into any story line.

No one wants to read about my personal problems.  I'm not that interesting yet. I'm not a mega star.  I'm not in People Magazine. Frankly, few care about what I know in my real life.  People what to know if I can tell a story.

Yes.  Yes I can.

I can tell tales of my real life, I do, with my Elsie W books.  I put a funny spin on things because, even in telling the truth, I believe we have to laugh. Otherwise life is too dark and dreary.  But when it comes to fiction, that's another story. Literally.

So when you pick up the books with my name on them, no, I didn't really live any of that.  Sure, I've lived in small town Wisconsin. I've gone to a Rick Springfield concert. I've watched figure skating on TV. I've been to Nashville and a Renaissance Faire and Madison, Wisconsin.  But beyond that, I take a step away from myself and out into a beautiful, wonderful world of imagination where the problems aren't mine and everything has a solution eventually.

Writers often joke about being insane or raging at their work in progress.  Truth is, writing gives us joy.  Solving a plot problem can be the highlight of our year.  Frankly, if writing didn't give us joy, it's doubtful we writers would do it.  Oh sure, my hero, Dorothy Parker, once said, "I hate writing."  But she followed it up with, "I love having written."

So my friends, if you love to write, but you don't want to write what you know in your real life, it's okay.  As long as you're a good story teller, you can build worlds and races and histories and languages all you want.  You can solve everyone's problems...even if you can't solve your own.