To me, ‘write what you know’ means using as raw material for a story a feeling or experience that’s genuinely my own, rather than an idea I picked up from from a book or from the news, something that’s external and not internal, and that has originally belonged to someone else.
I think ‘write what you know’ is especially important for your first novel, and that as you become an experienced writer, you can go on to write what you don’t know, but only after you’ve spoken your personal truths.
On First Novels
It seems to me that most great first novels tell an intimate personal story. Think of Ernest Hemingway’s Sun Also Rises, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, or Jeannette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.
Those authors have lived the story before telling it. Of course they invented many beautiful lies, but they placed them on a solid foundation made of personal truths.
The Name of the Rose appears to be a notable exception. It’s a philosophical story about books, set many centuries ago, telling of strange deaths in a remote monastery. That doesn’t sound too personal. But once you check Umberto Eco’s biography and learn that he has been an academic all his life, and has 50,000 volumes in his two libraries, you understand that his first novel is really personal, about his great love for books.
Truth and Lies
I think that when you base your story on something you’ve gone through, the story becomes more intimate, and the protagonist more sympathetic, and that this will compensate, to some extent, for literary faults caused by inexperience. Moreover, it will make the writing more easy and more relaxed, because you’re not writing for others, but for yourself.
The plot, the characters, and the setting can be completely unlike the story of your life, the people around you, and the place where you live. But the thing that keeps them all together has to be genuinely you.
I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it. – Toni Morrison
When I decided to write a novel I started with a big, philosophical fantasy, and I wanted to make it as complex and as sophisticated as I could. But as I wrote lies, lies, lies, I realized I was trying to outsmart more intelligent and more experienced writers, in making writing a competition of ideas against others, in doing my best to distance myself from feelings that I tried to deny, thinking them not worthy of a book. But it’s exactly those feelings that give birth to great books.
Then I shifted my focus to my emotions, and put the philosophical fantasy aside, not to work on it again until I had told the personal story first. I went on to analyse the profound feeling of heartbreak I felt at that time, to understand it better, with all its causes and effects, and by doing so to get over it. The writing became smoother, and I believed it it, and for each ten beautiful lies I had a heavy truth to keep the balance.
Nothing is Wasted
What’s great about telling a personal story is that whether it will work or not you will not regret writing it, because it teaches you much about yourself. And probably that’s what writing is all about. Self-discovery.
boy with a hat 
I read once in a book on writing that you shouldn’t start writing a book until you can’t get the idea out of your head, because otherwise you won’t finish writing it. I think this goes along with the idea of writing what you know…if you start out telling lies you have no real reason behind writing it, writing what you know means writing about your life in some way, and we are inherently passionate about our lives and our personal stories.
‘Everything you need to know about me is inside of you.’ That’s so well put Wesley!
‘…whether it will work or not you will not regret writing it…’
Great concept!
Sometimes I think we can suffer after writing something. I often think that this is because we have written something we haven’t inhabited, and thus known, and truly understood. I think the suffering is the presence of denial – so yes, if you write what you know, and go through the brave journey that allows you to finally learn about yourself, then there will be no regrets.
That’s so true!
As someone who probably writes ten truths for every lie, I absolutely agree. Similarly, I had to set aside a longer story that was not based on my own experience and write about myself for a few years before getting to the point where I felt I could embark on that story again.
I’ve finished The History of Love yesterday. Loved it. Much to learn from it.
🙂 Yes, definitely. That book helped shape who I am, particularly as I read it when I was quite young.
You mean you are like little Alma? You filled some notebooks with how to survive in the wild? Come to think of it, you have some pictures of greenery on your blog…
As a writer I mean.
Good read, certainly some very good points. 🙂
Glad you liked it Amy.
You’re quite wise for your age, Vincent.
Besides that, I can’t wait to read your personal story and wonder what of it is true and what is a fantasy :).
The fantastical parts will be true, the commonplace ones will be fantasy. 🙂
Now I don’t have to figure it out anymore… Ech…
I think possibly the best writing tends to be about the personal, emotional truths. And it is transformative – in the reading, and the writing…
‘Tis true aunt! What is it that I have heard about Pepi becoming immortal too?
Ah well, a small project for a large-hearted creature. The two of you, I think, will make great company as immortals 😉
I ‘ve realised this. When I began writing my first book, i was the most malleable neophyte EVER. Almost everything, from a beautiful looking person to a scene in a movie expressing great joy or sorrow, made me tear out my previous page, and start over-only to realize I wasnt yet able to create a story of someone elses moment. It was as if my imagination had become the Aswan dam-very congested, ALL the nutrients,every one of my idea were blocked by the fantasies of my own life. Rventually I started a story about me, and now i’m free. =)
Well said!
You’re dangerous.
You wont believe how long i’ve waited to be told that.
‘Nothing is Wasted.’ A great conclusion to this piece of writing revelation.