Should you write what you know? Have you frozen to a stop when facing a topic or story because you realize how little you know? Do you fear that writing only what you know will limit your writing? A recent blog post by a fellow writer caused me to consider these questions anew.

You can find a cure for lack of “knowing” through additional learning and research. A more troublesome issue, however, arises when you consider the role that imagination plays in your writing. Write what you know or what you can get to know will be more practical for non-fiction work, but should you stop imagining beyond what you know or stretching beyond the world around us when writing fiction? Much of science fiction and fantasy literature would be impossible to write under such a constraint, as would a lot of not so fantastical story-telling.

My main concern, however, is that when I’ve tried to comply with this “write what you know” dictum, I end up with clinical, technical, intellectual story-telling that comes at you dry and boring. The problem with writing what you know is that it can turn into a just the facts ma’am exercise where you haven’t really explored what matters underneath those facts. Story-telling, after all, encompasses a lot more than a data dump from my brain to yours. But what does that “a lot more” include?

For me, the answer comes in one word: heart.

I don’t just write what I know, I write who I know, who I get to meet and know in my stories, from the inside out, from the heart. For me story-telling is above all an exploration of the human condition, and as such, I have to engage in the human psyche, in emotion, and yes, even in the spiritual aspects of human existence. Whether my story is happening in a galaxy far away or around the corner from my grocery store, the common denominator will be people — characters we call them. They are the ones I really need to know. The rest I can know, research or imagine. But their hearts, their aspirations, their fears, their weaknesses and strengths, who they are as total persons — all of that must land on the page. To make that happen, I must know them, and I must know their hearts.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge this is no easy feat. At first my writing felt really flat because I didn’t want to go there. Sometimes you may even have to cry as you write (yikes!). But that’s when writing gets interesting and worth doing. That’s when you go beyond what you know to that which is real at its core.

Write what you know? Sure, but more than that, write with your heart.

For samples of my work, visit my Amazon author page.