You’ve probably heard it said, write what you know.
Supposedly Mark Twain coined the phrase. Personally, I connect more with another of his quotes: “Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”
But what about that first adage? I’ve seen lots of beginners gripe about it. If I’m supposed to write what I know, they say, how in the hell can I write a fantasy, or a science fiction story, or for that matter, the next Harry Potter series?
In other words, since warp drive doesn’t exist and wizards aren’t real, how can a writer know enough about them to pen a novel?
So, that’s where imagination comes in. What you know + what you imagine + some solid research. At least, that’s the formula that carried me through the novel-writing process.
The “what you know” part was, Elvis sent me an audio cassette, ten years to the day that he died. That’s what I know. That’s my truth. So I wrote about it. My novel is not an autobiography. It’s simply an embodiment of real-life stuff, twisted, stretched, re-imagined. The “knowing” is just the jumping off point.
A nighttime visit to Graceland: one of the “imagine” parts of the story.
In other words, I seized an idea and sprinted like wildfire. That’s what it truly means to write what you know. I can’t guarantee that I’ll always be confined to the realms of a TV journalist or the Elvis-verse. However, I do know something about these subjects, so why not fashion a captivating book around them?
When I initially crafted my story, I incorporated every incident, every blunder, every cringe-worthy moment that life and my career had to offer (plus some other stuff I may have heard about over the years). Then I tossed it all into a literary blender and baked it into a timeline of roughly 18-months in the life of a Memphis reporter.
That’s how we get various episodes such as:
- a communication from Elvis via cassette tape
-tumbling butt naked from a cliff
- ass-chewings from the boss
-sticking a microphone in victims’ faces
-pissing off cops at a news conference
-co-anchors who flirt
-viewers who flirt
-meeting and interviewing celebs
-election night disasters
-spying
-snooping
-trespassing
-high-speed chases
-getting insulted, assaulted, shot at
About 200,000 words later, somehow it all fit into place. But it was too much! They tell me a first-time novel should fall somewhere in the 100,000 word range.
So I took Mark Twain’s other advice and crossed out the wrong words. A hundred thousand of them! Had to cut some interesting material, including a standup comic character who peddled lucky potatoes, a trip to a political rally, a visit to Reverend Green’s church, and an angry ex-girlfriend sending chicken soup flying.
I figure there’s enough material in the discard folder to power several episodes when they turn this into a streaming limited series.