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Every prompt list says "write what you know" and that advice almost killed my whole story
A guy in my writing group in Dayton handed out a prompt sheet last Tuesday that started with "write what you know," and I watched six people write the same sad story about their office job. Here is what bugs me: that phrase gets read as "write only your own life," so nobody reaches for the weird stuff, like a tax auditor who talks to houseplants or a 14 year old running a pawn shop. I know this because I spent two months writing nothing but my own boring shift stories and they all sounded the same, then I switched to a prompt about a locksmith who can't open his own front door and wrote 9 pages in one night. So when a prompt says write what you know, does anyone else take that to mean write what you feel and just make up the rest, or am I reading it wrong?
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shane_nguyen27d ago
Six people writing the same sad office story? That would've made me walk out of that room.
Write what you know means write what you feel, not a court report of your Tuesday.
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