Write What You Know...Or Make It All Up?

Hey there, poetic acquaintances! I suppose in a few posts I’ll be calling you all buddies or pals (or perhaps, less cheekily: friends), but for now, acquaintances shall suffice. I’m Emily, here to welcome you to the cluttered jumble that is my train of thought for this week’s Musing.

The inception of this blog has had me thinking about beginnings; specifically, the beginning of feeling like a writer. At what point do you transcend the journal entries and written scraps on crumpled napkins and reach writerhood? How do you narrow the churning river of your thoughts into one consistent theme? What are these words that have sprung up on the page, and where the hell did they come from? What is writing, even?

The easiest way to get started—and for most, the first piece of writing advice they receive—is to write what you know. Drawing phrases and imagery from your memory should be a piece of cake; after all, it was your experience, who would know better than you how to write about it? 

Contrary to this seemingly-simple advice, this is where my brain starts to sputter: “Write what I know?”

I haven't found my memories or life stories to be very, well, riveting. Who am I to declare that my experience is poem-worthy? What has my little Midwestern life got to do with anything of actual importance? To make matters worse, I find myself stumbling gracelessly through any poem I try to write that actually captures something that has happened to or around me. Writing what I know normally produces a stiff, weak poem that sounds like I made everything up, and did a bad job. In my own personal poetic experience, I feel more connected to my poems that don’t come from a personal experience of mine. The poems that make me feel the most free, the most creative, the most true to the inner-workings of my brain, are the ones where I essentially made everything up.

So here is my question to you, my partners in the poetry game: is it easier to write what you know, or to make it all up?

The tricky bit on both sides of the coin is the risk involved: do you really know what you think you know? Are you being true to the memory of a person, or of an event? Or have you twisted it over time?

Conversely, if you do make everything up, are you being true to a person that’s had that experience? Is your imaginary experience going to drum up a pounding heartbeat or tug tears from a reader's eyes, making them empathize with your words even when you don't entirely know the situation you crafted?

Perhaps it's a personal poetry problem (I'm all about the alliteration today, can you tell?), but I can't help but wonder if anyone feels the same....

What do you struggle with as a poet? Tell us (lament) in the comments below.