The Experience of Self

It’s become almost a cliché that writers write about what they know. You’ve probably even heard an English teacher or a writer say that the best way to start writing is to just write what you know. And it’s true that this is what writers do. The act of writing is the act of collecting the world around us into language—taking the concrete and making it abstract, and taking the abstract and transforming it into the concrete. What we know best is ourselves, and what we know second best is the world around us. So it is true that writers write about what they know.
 
But does this mean that we can only write about our hobbies or our families or our jobs, or what we did over the weekend, or conversations that we have had? No. Our brains know things—the best way to throw a football, our loved one’s birthdays, the easiest way to commute to work, how to rebuild an engine—but our hearts and our imaginations also know things, and if we let those two facets of our being have a voice, our writing begins to reflect our individuality, or what is also known as our authentic voice.
 
So as you begin your short career as a writer this semester, keep in mind that your best writing will come out of you when you write with honesty and with all your heart and imagination knows, when you look down into yourself and honor the creativity that distinguishes you from every other person in your class, and from every other person in the world.