"Here's the problem with Write what you know: What too many aspiring writers know, it turns out, is that a suburban American adolescence causes vague feelings of sadness -- especially when one's formative years include a dying grandparent or housepet. A way to avoid such tedium is to write what you don't know, to labor toward peculiarity. The risk there is that your well-researched make-believe might come off as exactly that: a fake. It's the lucky writer whose story is familiar to himself and exotic to his readers."
- Darin Strauss
Posted by sheilaI've always interpreted this famous dictum as: If you write about something, be sure you know it, if you don't you'd best learn it.
Posted by: Scott Janssens at March 9, 2005 12:27 PM