Don’t You Dare Write What You Know!

May 2, 2013

I’m running my Write The Fight Right workshop at the Writer’s Centre in Adelaide on May 12th, and as part of the lead up to that, the SA Writers’ Centre asked me for a guest post for their blog. Here’s what I wrote:

You’ve heard the old adage, I’m sure. Write what you know. That’s all very well, but it’s actually a terrible piece of advice. After all, we all know some stuff, but not much in the grand scheme of things. And if we only write what we know, we’ll soon run out of things to write about. Besides that, one of the things I enjoy most about writing is the excuse it gives me to learn new stuff. For example, I’ve never been in a cult, but when I was writing MageSign I needed to understand how cults work as they were integral to the novel’s plot. So I went off to study all about them and learned a lot. Having a psychiatrist for a mother-in-law is generally about as much fun as it sounds, but in this instance it proved invaluable…

Read the rest at the SAWC Blog here.

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