Thank you Emma for these thorough and insightful points about writing which were inspired by Bruinhilda.
To me your piece reinforces all that is sacred about writing. I sometimes remind myself that I'm writing the book I long to read. It's a quest. I need to be curious about this voyage of discovery - writing towards what I want to know.
This quote from Toni Morrison underscores your point about giving ourselves permission - people writing about what they are not.
'When I taught creative writing at Princeton, (my students) had been told all of their lives to write what they knew. I always began the course by saying, “Don’t pay any attention to that.” First, because you don’t know anything and second, because I don’t want to hear about your true love and your mama and your papa and your friends. Think of somebody you don’t know. What about a Mexican waitress in the Rio Grande who can barely speak English? Or what about a Grande Madame in Paris?'
True. And for many of us, it's not just the people we don't know but the entire world. As Ursula K Le Guin said, "It is more like a process of discovery: I go there and I look around and wait, and see what I see; and I am really learning the place as I live there. Often I have glimpsed the character and the place, but that’s it; it’s just a glimpse, and then my job is to find out who that person is and what they’re doing there."
Yes, "Write what you know" is such a prison - and sometimes a prison created by well-intentioned folk. Many of the best books have been written out of what the writer wanted to read.
Thank you Emma for these thorough and insightful points about writing which were inspired by Bruinhilda.
To me your piece reinforces all that is sacred about writing. I sometimes remind myself that I'm writing the book I long to read. It's a quest. I need to be curious about this voyage of discovery - writing towards what I want to know.
This quote from Toni Morrison underscores your point about giving ourselves permission - people writing about what they are not.
'When I taught creative writing at Princeton, (my students) had been told all of their lives to write what they knew. I always began the course by saying, “Don’t pay any attention to that.” First, because you don’t know anything and second, because I don’t want to hear about your true love and your mama and your papa and your friends. Think of somebody you don’t know. What about a Mexican waitress in the Rio Grande who can barely speak English? Or what about a Grande Madame in Paris?'
True. And for many of us, it's not just the people we don't know but the entire world. As Ursula K Le Guin said, "It is more like a process of discovery: I go there and I look around and wait, and see what I see; and I am really learning the place as I live there. Often I have glimpsed the character and the place, but that’s it; it’s just a glimpse, and then my job is to find out who that person is and what they’re doing there."
Yes, "Write what you know" is such a prison - and sometimes a prison created by well-intentioned folk. Many of the best books have been written out of what the writer wanted to read.
Marvellous, hurray! <loud applause> <starts saving> 😀👏😀