Building your Writing Toolkit: Part Four – Building Material for your Material.

Starting off with a quick recap, so far I’ve covered starting a project (knowing how you start to write), clearing off your toolbench (knowing what environment is best for you to write in), and finding your level (understanding what type of writing makes you happy). Now I’m going to start to talk about the actual mechanics of writing – what you’re working with and how to shape it. This blog is about what you’re working with – the buying two-by-fours part of the toolkit metaphor.

When it comes to the material that you’re writing about, pretty much everyone has heard the words “write what you know.” Yes. Well. I have to agree with that at least a little, because it’s awfully hard to write about something that you know nothing about (i.e. Bio majors writing about Milton’s Lucifer or English majors writing about water transfer in plant cells), however I disagree with the idea of writing only about things that you know all about.

Let’s say that you know all about cats. You know their eating, sleeping, mating and fighting habits. You can name every breed of housecat on sight and can tell anyone willing to listen which big cat is that particular breed of housecat’s closest genetic relative. You scoff at the pedestrian knowledge parceled out in Cat Fancy and are writing your dissertation on the role of cats in folklore from the 7th century. Good for you.

Here’s the problem: no one is going to read your dissertation. Your dissertation committee isn’t even going to read your dissertation. You’re so knowledgeable on this topic that no one can argue or disagree with you – and where’s the fun in that?

However, let’s say you know a little about cats. You know what they’re like around strangers, you know that they’re picky eaters. You know that they tend to be the chosen companions of lonely, introverted people. You’re toying with the idea of writing a story that combines your limited understanding of cats with your somewhat more comprehensive knowledge of people in order to explore the dynamics of loneliness in modern cities.

I’d read it. And I’m sure a lot of people (probably people who like cats or who are lonely or both) would read it too.

Writing what you know is a trap. If you write only what you know well, you’re going to spend the rest of your life trying to become an expert on something so that you can write about it.

Here’s a quote from Robert Heinlein that I like to share whenever someone tells me that I need to focus on a single interest: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

As a writer you don’t want to be a specialist: you’ll only end up trapped in a genre, age group, era or field that you don’t want to be stuck in forever. So what do you do to avoid the trap?

Do everything. This is how you build material to write about.

I’m not talking about going to med school, getting a Ph.D. in Political Science, learning seventeen languages, running for Mayor, working at a coffee shop, starting a law firm and running marathons. I’m talking bout the little things all around you.

Too many writers fall into the habit of cloistering themselves in their chosen writing habitat at around the same time they finish college and never going outside again. You can’t get stuck there – go outside.

Change your oil, ride a bus, go to the zoo, take a train ride, walk down a street you haven’t before, take a different route to work, learn how to fix your sink, browse Wikipedia, go into a new bookstore, take up rollerblading, go to Home Depot, talk to strangers – lots of strangers, go to a dive bar, go to a nice bar, go see a Ska band, go to a symphony, take a metalworking class, sign up for dance lessons, dig a hole, draw a picture. Do something that you don’t normally do. Come up with something new every day.

Sure, it sounds trite as hell, but knowing a little about a lot of things is frequently better than knowing a lot about a few things. At the very least you’ll be able to fill in more details when you’re writing, like what kind of wrench you use to remove an oil filter or what kind of paper a watercolor artist is likely to buy. At the very most you’ll find a hobby that interests you enough that you know it well enough to make it the basis of your next novel.

When you hear the phrase “write what you know” it is important to understand that you don’t have to know everything about an incredibly narrow topic; you do, however, have to realistically know about and understand the world that you’re writing. The only way to effectively know about the world you’re writing is to know about and understand the world you’re living in. And the only way to do that is to go outside and play in it.

Writers are a blessed, cursed, complicated kind of person. They have to be flexible enough to learn from any situation they find themselves in but firm enough to know when they’ve learned enough. If all you know is college kids and drugs, have fun trying to edge in on Brett Easton Ellis’s market. If all you know is falling into fantasy worlds, Neil Gamian’s got you beat. If all you see is the mundane becoming terrifying, Stephen King is sticking his tongue out at you and going “neener, neener, neener,” though Kafka was doing it better and earlier. If all you know is gentle, handsome men mildly coercing strong-willed women into lasting, passionate relationships please stop writing because romance novels are awful, and we already have enough of them in the world.

What I’m trying to tell you – and all writers – to do is to go out somewhere on this great, big, spinning deathsphere into the sunshine and find something to write about. There’s a story everywhere, a poem waiting to be written in every instance of human contact, and a novel in every new thing you encounter. So go find it! If you don’t, someone else is certainly willing to.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back next Sunday, Feb 26th, with part five of your toolkit: Pounding it together – Making Narrative Work. This is going to be a big topic, and might be broken up into a couple of blogs. Until then, I’m going to shamelessly self-advertise: last week I mentioned my silly poem “My Homework Ate My Dog,” this weekend I sat down, made some crappy illustrations online, and organized them into a video of me reading the poem. If this is the kind of thing you are likely to find amusing, you may go and amuse yourself with it here.

Have a great week, and I’ll be ranting at you soon,
Cheers,
-Alli