This subject just doesn’t want to go away, at least in my own mind, although I have heard from a couple good friends who are accomplished writers on this subject. As I have thought about “writing what you know” (and before Twisted River) I have questioned it before. Of course what you do know gives you insight, but still so limiting. One example I have, came through setting up a high school writing class.
A friend had told the teacher about me and she asked me to come talk about nature writing. It was a nature writing class, sort of aimed at observing and journaling, so I thought in order to say something new I would try how nature writing is used in fiction that is not particularly about nature.
My favorite example of that is Norman Mailer's description of the Connecticut salt marshes in Tough Guys Don't Dance. It was one of the best pieces of nature writing I have ever read. I remember stopping after being enthralled with how much the author knew about it, and when I came alert and realized it was Mailer I was actually surprised. Yet, do we think of Mailer as a nature writer? NO. Was he writing about what he knew? Not really. Did he do it well? Yes.
Or, you could say we are always writing about what we know, as in looking at new things through our own old, tired personal perspective. Did Truman Capote know anything about cold-blooded murder? It goes on and on. And right now I apologize to all my students I told to write what they know, except I do remember telling them take what you know and expand it into new areas. So maybe I am OK.
"Anyway, over a dinner at some roadhouse, Stanley started talking about the "write what you know" idea. He said it was exactly right, because you would provide really perfect details that way. Like, he said, when he wrote about Chicago, where he was born, he could describe in detail the Guatamalan-Chinese restaruants. He then went on to expatiate on the perfect of this recipe and that recipe. And all the time I was thinking, "Guatamalan-Chinese?" I finally asked him if he was putting me on. He grinned. "That was fun. I was just making that all up," he said. It was weirdly believable stuff, except--Guatamalan Chinese?"
Here is another voice on the subject, My friend and a wonderful writer, Patricia Monaghan:
"Your comments on Irving's questioning of "write what you know" reminded me of when Stanley Elkin came up to Alaska. He was brought up to do readings etc, and I got to drive him from Anchorage to Homer, or was it the other way around. Anyway, he was full of sage advice. Like, one time over drinks when I was complaining that my editor (I'd published my first book and really wanted to sell a second) wanted me to do something I wasn't very excited about. Stanley asked what I wanted to write about, and I said sun goddesses, but no one was interested. "Well, if you don't write the books you want to write, who's gonna?" he asked. I had no answer to that. So I spent years writing the sun goddess book which was in print for six months, but it was still the best thing to do.
Incidentally, the teacher afterward told me she had never thought of including fiction and would I let her keep my teaching notes. I did. And, they must have worked for her because I was never invited back.
And I will make no more promises to stop talking about writing any more.
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