“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
I’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.
Total Quality Tedium
Sheila O’Malley turned up this quote from Darin Strauss (author of Chang and Eng): 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…