Don't Write What He Knows
Write what you know.
A successful writing friend once told me that people shouldn’t use writing as therapy.
His theory went that there were plenty of folks out there who didn’t put their traumas into their work, and that their work was generally better for it.
It’s easy to say that when you have no significant trauma in your life.
This same man told me to write what I know.
He was a writer with a lot of privilege. He led me down a lot of wrongheaded paths to service his ego, not my writing. I didn’t see it at the time. I see it now. Ideally I can warn you off a similar experience.
Be cautious with who you choose to mentor your work.
Yes, this includes me.
The other problem was his use of “better.”
Better for him meant (and means) more marketable. More palatable, even if his work took genuine risks. They were calculated risks, risks that appeal to targeted audiences, and still do.
He, like most writers, subscribes to the idea that we only write for an audience/recognition, or for cash.
Without that, after all, why bother?
You’d be surprised how systemic this horrific sentiment is in the writing community. Or maybe just I am.
It’s certainly what almost every English professor told me in college. “If it just sits in a drawer, what’s the POINT?”
I always wanted to say “I’m alive, aren’t I?”
But that doesn’t matter to that apparatus, not a lick.
As if writing has to have a point, or any success, to hold worth.
Of all people, a teacher should understand the value of fighting a good fight they know they’ll never win.
And yet.
A rhetorical question you may already know the answer to: How many of those educators had published novels?
Correct.
None of them. Most hadn’t even written one.
By college I’d written three.
Of course, I’m still unpublished traditionally with novels, so they get the last laugh, from their perspective.
It’s good that this no longer bothers me. We both win that way.
I like my win better, I must admit, with smug satisfaction.
I have never understood most writers (or writer educators) in this sense, the way they cling to money or regard. It was always secondary to me. This is to my detriment financially and socially, but certainly beneficial to my peace of mind.
I value being at peace more. I am a piss-poor capitalist.
I imagine, however, that the reason this attitude is so pervasive has something to do with the way everyone treats a writer or an artist when they learn they’re in the presence of one.
We generally judge writers and their success through three lenses:
Is this person popular?
Do they make money?
Is their work fun?
Is this person popular?
The first question anyone asks me when they learn I write is, “Anything I’d know?”
No. You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t know the work of most famous writers. There are more books than you can remotely contemplate. Go look.
I get it. What you really want to know is if I am famous, and do you now suddenly know someone with some degree of fame.
No. You don’t. That’s good. Be glad I am an unknown. You don’t want to know famous people. A good portion are insufferable and selfish and abusive.
Do not meet your idols. There are already few enough people to like in this world.
Did this make money?
The second question is always “You make any money doing that?”
No. You don’t. Almost every writer you meet, even ones with “trad pub cred,” are still working second jobs. The vast bulk. Yes, even ones with a slight degree of fame. Or they’re independently wealthy somehow. Lots of that rolling around.
If I wanted/needed to make money, I wouldn’t write to an audience. I’d go back to construction, plumbing, caregiving, waiting tables, working as a personal assistant, or any of the other terrible things I did so I could write.
They pay, and at least people respect the work when it’s done if you did it right, unlike writing.
Is their work fun?
The last question, which you rarely get to (most people lose active interest when they learn you’re not famous or rich from your writing), is “What do you write about?”
Bless the heart of every fucker who gets to this question, every one of you. So few do.
Still. Jesus. Come on. Try, at least. What do I write about?
Everything.
There’s an old bit in a Bukowski movie where Chinaski’s trying to get a job at a pickle factory to get by. He says he’s a writer. The boss asks him if he’s sure. He says no. The boss then asks what he writes. What his novel’s about.
He says “Everything.”
“You mean, for instance, it’s about cancer?”
“Yes.”
“How about my wife?”
“She’s in there too.”
Ten minutes later, he’s stuffing pickle jars. Behold the man.
When someone realizes you’re not famous, and not rich, the essential question comes down to “How can you entertain me?”
Which is simply a reworking of that age-old capitalist saw: “How can I exploit you to my benefit?”
You want me stuffing your pickle for you so you can have your convenient snacks at a low low price. I get it. I just want you to see what the pickle means, Sigmund.
That’s the war between us.
I know you’re getting dicked, and I’m trying to tell you all you see is a salty treat.
None of these questions ever ask the person why they do what they do, or even what they’re doing. Because “why” doesn’t matter to anyone but the writer, really. My answer is “So I don’t die, by my own hand or someone else’s.”
Not “To be famous.” “To make money.” or “To amuse you.” Though I would be glad for any or all of those things, none are requisite.
I imagine the man who told me that trauma has no place in work would disagree avidly. He’d probably make a great college writing teacher. Sure enough, he gets offered to lecture and teach, and I don’t.
A rich, popular writer is quite the coup for an English class.
An honest, unknown writer is a disciplinary write-up waiting to happen, I’d imagine. I wouldn’t know. It never happens.
People who say writing doesn’t have to be filled with trauma, if you’re traumatized, are effectively saying “Don’t write what you know.”
It’s as bad as saying “Don’t make your writing political.” when everything, everything, everything is.
It’s telling a poor person with no bootstraps to pull themselves up by them, or telling a man who wants to cry to just tamp that shit down, it’s better that way. It’s the wealthy white guy who doesn’t see poverty writing about things that inherently consider poverty.
A Bukowski who never once packed a pickle.
A creative blind spot of the worst kind.
A circular firing squad for purveyors of words.
People who don’t want to write trauma are just fuckin’ fine, too. To be clear.
All I’m saying is that it’s always a mistake to tell other people how to be what they are, especially when it involves suppressing an essential part of it.
That strikes me as the antithesis of honest writing, the antithesis of what we know to be true.
Don’t Mary Sue and fulfill wishes through your prose. That’s shit.
But if your Dad beat you, and if your character tells you her mother beats her, don’t let anyone talk you out of using that shit for fear of “inserting yourself into the narrative.”
You know yourself better than any asshole knows what’s good for you or your art.
And more dangerously, when you listen to people who tell you what you should be, you just might become, forever, what they think they should be. Which is the most dangerous thing for a writer. Worse than suicide or drugs or block by far.
Also. Pro tip.
If you’re one of those lucky few writers who has money and success and popularity and no trauma, maybe shut the fuck up about what others should do instead of pretending you’ve won the hard-fought truths of existence. Just go on and be happy being able to do a thing countless millions dream of. That’s enough for you.
Not that anyone with money or fame or popularity can, or would even listen to a thing I say, but hey. It brings me to my point.
Recovery from my trauma ain’t about you and your happy little rich world, sunshine.
Never was, never will be.
Speaking of the hypothetical, hypocrtical joys of seeking money and popularity to survive, Wilder is on sale today.
A purchase lets you write or leave a review on Amazon, and those reviews, sadly, are a lifeblood to this endeavor’s success.
I’m gonna keep doing this either way, but if you’re willing, it’d be doing me a solid.
Stay safe out there. Enjoy your pickles.