Write What You Don't Know!
I’ve been a big Hemingway fan for a long time. I’m friends with some of he family members too, and they are all good and talented people.
I used to read a lot of Hemingway biographies and weigh every bit of his writerly advice and wisdom as if it were solid gold (or, these days, Bitcoin #BTC).
Now that I’m a little older…okay, a lot older…I’ve sort of figured out that Papa would like to offer advice that wasn’t meant to be taken entirely serious, but instead, more tongue in cheek.
For instance, he’d say, all you need to do to get a story going was write one true sentence.
Okay, fair enough, but what the hell does that really mean. What makes one sentence more true than another?
Another one was, there’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit at your typewriter and bleed.
I guess if the writing is that hard, do something else with your life.
One classic doozy is as follows: Write what you know.
Okay, this one is true enough in that if you are an expert at something, chances are you will be able to write about it easier than other topics.
But I write about crime, and cops, and I’m no law enforcement officer. I write about lawyers and pathologists and I make shit up all the time that isn’t true, but it certainly seems true to thousands of readers.
As a journalist and freelance writer, I write on the law. I have no idea what I’m talking about, but if I do my research well enough and gather up enough sources, I can come off as an expert.
The same holds true for medical topics, architectural topics, crime, finances, even metal working. I don’t have the foggiest and yet I write articles on these topics and get paid.
Thanks Papa for your books, your words, your inspiration. But only now am I realizing that you also had one hell of a sense of humor.
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