A guest post by Hamilton Perez.

There’s one piece of writer’s advice that is, I think, as misguided as it is persistent. The reason it does so well, of course, is because it’s not actually bad advice, it’s just often misapplied. That advice is the old adage: Write what you know.

In life, this translates to something like, “Find what you’re good at and do that.” It’s great advice for when you’re first starting out, either as a writer or in a new career; it helps you discover parts of who you are, what skills you have, unlocks your potential or at the very least points you in that direction.

Looking back, I’m pretty sure that the more seasoned writers who recommended “write what you know” were politely telling me that some part of my writing didn’t ring true. Maybe I described a place I’d never been to, or what it’s like to jump out of a plane, or travel through Europe–whatever it was, I did it wrong. I needed to go back to the beginning and start with something simpler and closer to my own experience.

I took their advice and focused on stories with more familiar settings and characters, and I immediately hit a brick wall. Should I take actual experiences and fictionalize them? Should I write about themes of friendship, love, and loss? What does that look like on page 1? The experiences I’ve had that seemed most suitable for adaptation resisted being written the most.

Trying to tell a story based on an actual experience, even with deviations and embellishments to make them properly fictional, resulted in something constraining and strangely hollow. What I learned from years focused on writing “literary fiction” (a pretentious way to say there are no dragons), was it’s not the memories of heartache or longing that most inspire me, it’s the dreams and fears of what I haven’t yet experienced. Those are the thoughts that get my heart pounding and give a pulse to the page.

For me, “Write what you know” hindered growth by encouraging me to lean on what I already knew or was already good at, instead of pushing me into unknown waters where I could really find what I’m capable of. Ultimately, what I know was just getting in the way. And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

Through classes, workshops, and slush reading for magazines, I’ve come across a lot of boring characters and stories surrounded by beautiful writing. And I think this “write what you know” advice is partly to blame. We have a whole generation of budding writers trying to “write what they know” by pulling from homogeneous experiences, and as a result we have literary journals full of mediocre literature. That isn’t to say there aren’t gems out there, or that literary journals aren’t a worthy pursuit, but good writing should take us to unexpected places, not simply look under the fabric of suburban life or failing relationships ad nauseam.

Eventually, I gave up on that and switched to speculative fiction. I have nothing in common (as far as I know) with pillow golems, changelings, or warrior mountain tribes of Martian sand people. But in turning to them, my writing has flourished, and has even allowed me to get back into non-genre fiction by opening up my imagination, rather than shutting it in.

Maybe writing about your past experiences does that for you, in which case, have at it. The ultimate point here is not to dump on that classic advice–it’s don’t pigeon hole your inspiration. Develop whatever interesting idea comes to you and turn it as far off the beaten trail as you can. Sure, 90% of what we create is probably garbage. Glorious garbage! But the rest might just be weird and scary enough to work. At the very least, you’ll grow.

So be messy. Explore new ideas. Go directions that feel alien to you. Poke your fingers into strange holes, ideologically speaking. In the end, you’ll find that what you know seeps through anyway, except it will do so naturally and with more honesty than if you just recounted the string of events that led to a broken heart.

They say life begins at the end of your comfort zone. I believe that’s where good writing begins as well. Because success or failure in the unknown are far more rewarding and exciting than building empires of sand along the familiar shores of home.

Hamilton Perez bio:

Hamilton Perez started writing at age twelve because there weren’t any crossovers between Terminator, Star Wars, and Jurassic Park, and he really thought there ought to be. Alas, after several cease and desist letters from everyone who read those stories, Hamilton moved on to other subjects. He is a slush reader for Fantasy Scroll Magazine and his work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction.

Sorry, Past Me

February 22, 2016

mary

The Writing Life No Comments

I grew up to write stories that were the opposite of what I wanted as a kid.

As a kid, I often found myself feeling frustrated by ambiguities in the stories I read. It probably didn’t help that I was reading books well above my grade level–here’s a hint, parents and guardians, your nine-year-old might not be emotionally ready for the graphic scenes in Timothy Findlay’s Not Wanted on the Voyage–but shock aside, I remember being irritated when I didn’t understand why characters were making the choices they did, or when I couldn’t tell if a character was a good guy or a baddie, or when a character I wanted to hate did a nice thing.

I want to write stories where everything is spelled out clearly. I’m not going to imply things that leave the reader guessing. I’m going to make sure my readers have the security of knowing exactly why characters make the choices they do and how they should feel about those choices. I’m going to write good guys who are perfect role models for everyone to imitate and bad guys who are always horrible.

I’m going to write stories that don’t have the same problems as my real life.

If I’d grown up to write the kind of stories I wanted as a kid, I doubt anyone would want to publish them. As an adult, I roll my eyes at the insertion of authorial voice telling me what I’m supposed to think about the characters–as though I can’t decide for myself who I sympathize with. But then again, maybe I don’t always sympathize with the so-called protagonists.

So what changed? Part of it was an understanding that came with maturity, that different people have different values. That different backgrounds and life experiences can cause two people to perceive the same event in strikingly different ways. That my own experiences weren’t “better” or “worse,” “more valid” or “less valid.”

And I began to develop an interest in fiction that showed me how other people thought.

If I’d had different life experiences, how would those have shaped my point of view? If I’d been born in another time, another culture, with a certain medical condition–without a certain medical condition–how would my life have changed? What did the world look like through the eyes of my family, my friends…my enemies?

Fiction was a way for me to explore and come to understand how different people thought. How someone didn’t necessarily have to be “wrong” or “a baddie” for two people to disagree. How very few people are consistently “good guys” or “bad guys” all the time, in everything they do. Even though fiction is make-believe, I learned a lot about empathy for other people by coming to understand how their thought processes worked and why they weren’t “bad” just for being different from me.

I also developed an appreciation for implication or suggestion. Open-ended questions left me thinking, pondering possibilities, looking for clues to support or deny my initial suspicions. And sometimes much of life is about learning to cope with the unknown and uncertain.

So now I write stories that give me the opportunity to look through someone else’s eyes. Sometimes aspects of these characters are much like aspects of my own personality; sometimes less so. I like the challenge of learning to understand the motivations, behaviour, and choices of people whose lives are very different from my own. I like to write stories in which both my protagonists and antagonists are following courses of action that make sense to them from where they stand.

Sorry, past me. I couldn’t write stories that were clearer than, more logical than, and “better than” real life. I had to write the stories that would help me understand and empathize in real life instead.

“Dear NSA Agent…”

February 20, 2016

E. Godhand

Action & Adventure Author's Perspective Authorial Trust Emily Godhand Horror The Writing Life Writing as An Emotional Outlet No Comments

I am not a criminal, I swear.

I’ve just experienced a life with a unique set of events and fields of study that, if one were given enough the correct motivation (and a healthy dose of limited moral inhibitions), the particular set of skills learned could be misapplied to one’s advantage. Fortunately, I’m in a position where the best use of these skills is writing realistic stories where the only people affected or hurt are characters.

There’s always that old writing advice of “write what you know”, but if that’s all writers did, there’d be a lot of the same old. I always liked to interpret it broader: “use what you know to help flesh out your story”.

It does help to have first hand experience with things, but in order to tell characters who know how to break locks, I don’t have to be a master locksmith. To tell characters who know how to use medicines or poisons, I don’t have to be a professional assassin. To describe characters who must infiltrate or use stealth to escape, I don’t have to be a scout or a ninja.

But having a familiarity with these concepts, and the feelings and logistics that surround them, can certainly be used in the stories to provide a more authentic experience.

So how do my characters know how to pick locks, poison, or sneak around? Because someone who was obviously not a good friend once told me to have an interesting life.

Back in middle school, I was your typical latch-key kid. I’d come home off the bus, pick up the mail, and let myself into the apartment. But on more than a couple occasions I forgot my key. Easy enough fix, you can use your student ID to let yourself in (seriously, use the deadbolts). But another time, the deadbolt was locked for some reason, which meant I wasn’t going in through the front door without property damage (and I didn’t have a drill handy anyway).

But I could climb over the balcony. Turns out that door was locked, too. With some bobby pins, tweezers, paper clips, for some reason the metal file on nail clippers, and a rudimentary knowledge of tumblers, I was able to get in.

Another time in gym class, someone decided to put their lock on my locker to keep me from getting my things. I got in, and kept their lock so they could never lock up their things until their parents bought them a new one. When they confronted me on it, it was already in the trash and I could honestly say I didn’t know what happened to it.

“Why would I have your lock? That’s a weird question to ask, did you give it to me somehow?”

Getting gently vicious at the middle-school gym. Add in another skill-set for my characters to learn.

Now, poison…I don’t have a story for poison. I’ve never poisoned anyone without it being a written order from a doctor for a dose low enough to be within the therapeutic range for the purpose of providing medical treatment. So, any medicine, really. Morphine. Chemotherapy.

I liked studying toxicology in the library, hoping one day to help people with overdoses after some friends got into drugs, and drinking was a problem within the community.

There was a greater job market and more marketable skills in medicine, so I learned more about medicines through the certification to be a pharmacy technician and then getting my nursing license. But with those studies comes the knowledge of the “Therapeutic Index”, and the difference between the toxic dose and the lethal dose. The “dose makes the poison” as the saying goes, and the dose that affects the body varies based on the mode of delivery.

Does the liver filter out most of it? Can you add in another substrate that will tie up the cells in the liver that detox the blood, thus leaving the chemical within the system to build up to lethal doses?

There’s a reason they make doctors take the “First, do no harm” oath, ‘cause oh, man, could we ever.
…also, people who took anatomy or who have hunted know how to dissect.
So. There’s that.

Horror writers, am I right? We’re fun folk. I get invited to so many parties. Someone please invite me to a party. I swear I’m charming and won’t bring up dissection again.

Stealth I learned from having to navigate the school, my home, the neighborhood, and the woods.

School because I didn’t make many friends, and if people noticed me it often didn’t end well. Where were the exits? How do you make a distraction? How do you blend into a crowd?

Home because …because.

Neighborhood because I often house-sat with my friend, and she’d often take long walks at night past curfew. I didn’t want her to go alone, so I’d go with her. We’d wander around the neighborhood and hide from passing cars or people.

Woods because I was involved with a search and rescue team. We were looking for people as a group, so obviously we wanted them to know we were coming, in case they wanted to be found.

…Did you know people who don’t want to be found hide in trees? So that’s what I used the night we had a squadron-wide bottle rocket war by the lake one summer.

We took turns ‘defending’ and ‘attacking’ a trailer hooked up with a security camera.
When my team, Bravo, was on ‘defend’, I snuck out to go scout out where Alpha was and what their plans were.

They didn’t expect to find me in the trees. Humans don’t usually have predators above them, so they rarely look up. To start, I was wearing overalls and a t-shirt over my swimsuit. The overalls made noise, so I took them off and kept the swimsuit bottoms. Black stands out at night, and dark blue is a much more natural color, so one of the boys lent me his shirt that I tied at my waist to avoid swishing or catching. I had a flashlight nestled in my chest to not only hold it but keep the noise down from it swinging.

I learned their plans, took off my boots to hide the noise, and took the dirt path back to the trailer to warn my team. Because Bravo was prepared, we could successfully defend. Like having me fire bottle rockets from the trees. They really weren’t expecting that.

When it came time for Bravo to attack, we had already defended, so we learned where the security cameras were and what their range was. We definitely got the better end of that coin toss.

The rule was, defending team started out inside, and we waited 15 minutes to give people time to spread out and get far enough away. I hid in the bushes and avoided the guards, then covered the cameras with my old shirt and overalls by staying just out of range. Sent out a rocket for my team to come out of hiding.

Alpha rushed outside to defend against the ambush, and with the majority of their forces distracted, I got inside and ducked past the guards. Got on the speaker: This is our castle now, and I am its Queen.
Because of all of these experiences, I can describe not only the logistics of what goes into less than reputable character actions, but the feelings they might have as they do so, whether the first time, or after it’s become second nature.

So think of what things in your life might not immediately translate into something you could put on a resume, but you still might be able to use in your story.

They Want to Kill Me…

February 19, 2016

Ace Jordyn

Ideas & Plotting Life Philosophies The Writing Life No Comments

…because I know their plan to kill the pregnant queen.

Standing on the ruins of a Minoan Palace, I heard that young voice begging for help. From that moment on, those stones, which had been set over 4,000 years ago, were symbols for the stories of an ancient civilization. This was a place where people had lived, loved, and died. Where they sought refuge from natural disasters and storms. Where politics ruled and religion tried to rationalize and explain the unknowable. Where engineering feats and hard work created structures and infrastructure that still exist today. It was where I found a novel-worthy story.

That’s the beauty of stepping away from the keyboard, away from the office, and most importantly, the familiar. When I do that, I clear my mind enough to ask the all important what-if questions. That’s what works for me. If I’m ever stuck for ideas (which I rarely am) I go see or do something new.

But I don’t need to go somewhere exotic or ancient to be inspired. For me, it can be as simple as a break in the routine.

I live near a wildlife park which is a protected park in the city. It’s got deer, coyotes, and the occasional wild cat or bear wandering through – a five minute walk and I’m in the wilderness. A creek which is a raging torrent when the snow melts off the mountains becomes a docile meander in the summer. It’s here where I can leave the familiar, and rest my brain. There, in the quiet, I imagine people foraging and hunting. I see wizards and knights in great adventures. Then there are dragons, faces in rocks, the Green People in the trees and entire kingdoms where life and death struggles occur. This is where I can watch a beetle crawl and wonder what it’d be like to mine precious minerals on Mars or hear a woodpecker tapping and wonder what message he brings.

I may or may not decide to use these imaginings in new or existing stories. This distraction is simply fun for my brain – it gives it a rest and if I’m lucky, it inspires story worthy ideas. When go back to writing, I feel creatively rested and sometimes if I’m lucky, a story problem has been subconsciously resolved.

In new situations, I stop thinking and just let myself feel, smell, hear, and observe from different perspectives. My imagination relaxes and has fun free-associating, and it rises to the challenge of answering the what-if questions.

I can’t explain how I can see political intrigue, religious zealotry, and murders 4,000 years ago in a rock. Or, how a wild life park can inspire a trilogy which addresses coming of age themes. Or how an aerial view from an airplane threw me into an alternate universe. Or how that beetle ended up on Mars…

What I do know is that when I suspend my everyday headspace, stop my mental machinations and give my imagination the freedom to play – strange and wonderful things happen.

For example, this winter I was in Colima Mexico, at the Platform ruins. While there, Mexico’s most active volcano sent plumes of smoke into the sky. I stood near a boulder which had been shot from the volcano 3,000 years ago. That boulder and others had been thrown over 30 miles and they landed in a heavily populated settlement. I wondered how people interpreted this powerful natural event. Their ability to engineer places to live was quite advanced but they didn’t understand the science behind the volcano’s dangerous fickleness. So as I watched the volcanic plumes, I imagined how they’d react to it and what their lives would have been like. Then, I was an archeologist a thousand years from now, digging through the remains of both our modern world and the ancient world. What if?

These experiences all have one thing in common – I experienced different sensory inputs than I normally do at home, in my office. An airplane, a log by a creek, ancient ruins – these places all have different sensory experiences. I touched a rock and saw a civilization. The breeze caressed my skin and it carried the smell of the ocean – was it a calming fragrance or the scent of a coming storm? The volcano’s plume was astounding but was it the gentle breath of the fiery god or his sulfurous wrath? I saw the relief of a continent and wondered about its fantastic and mythological societies. Leaves rustling, parched greens of summer, hot sand scorching my feet, the foraging of foods grown wild, the rich flavors of local spices, sitting on the deck, watching a lady bug traverse the whorl on the wooden deck board ….

The imagination is so filled with possibilities and stories. Changing my headspace, getting away from the everyday familiar to experience different sensory inputs, all give my imagination room to play. This is how I let my life experiences shape my writing.