Writing What You Love

Curt got me thinking about writing. Specifically, what should writers write about? Curt claims that the old maxim, “write what you know” is valid and I certainly can’t argue with that point, though my pedantic side wants to know: how should one define “know”?

I know about a few things; things that I’m passionate about and could write great lengths on. I could write and write, for instance, about literature. I could write at great lengths about William Faulker’s use of symbolism, how his masterpiece The Sound and the Fury beautifully constructs symbolism, builds an association between disparate objects through reinforcement—a character in the novel, Quentin, becomes obsessed with his sister’s sexuality and Faulker symbolizes this obsession with the smell of honeysuckle, not a typical symbol for sexuality, so Faulker has to explicitly construct this symbolism in the course of the novel, and he pulls it off rather remarkably. Or perhaps I could write on Thomas Pynchon’s main theme of his novel The Crying of Lot 49, which centers around communication and particularly miscommunication and how today we’re more connected than ever, but are unable to truly communicate. Pynchon cleverly introduces this theme by actually misdirecting the reader, making her think that the plot of the novel is important, that its mystery is its theme, whereas the plot is a red herring and is rather unimportant to the novel itself, serving only to expand on its central theme of communication. This theme, of being innudated with messages without any real communication is even more relavant today than in 1965 when The Crying of Lot 49 was published; for proof, read the comments on any YouTube video—vile spewing waste that likely lowers our collective IQ.

I could write pages on 20th century classical music. Or even, say photography. This site is ostensibly about photography, yet contains almost no writing on photography, perhaps because I have no interest in the technical side of photography, only in the creative side, which is not a topic I know how to write about. Yet still, I know enough about photography to write about it.

My main concern: do I know enough about these topics to write about them? Sure, I mean, anyone can write anything they wish, about something they love, but should they do so? For instance, say I was to write a 20,000 word discourse on symbolism in Faulker’s novels; would it be worthwhile? While I know a fair bit about the topic, I’m certainly far from an expert.

So, should someone be an expert on a subject before writing about it? I’d say no. A resounding no. Part of the process of becoming an expert on something is writing about it. Writing about something serves to reify the topic in one’s mind. Most of my writing is on very technical computer science topics, and I’ve always known a lot about the topic before writing anything about it; I’ve always thought deeply on a technical subject before putting a drop of ink on the page, but I don’t think I’ve ever been an expert before writing a thing all the way out. Writing forces one to really think through every point in detail. I’ve gotten to stages in the middle of a paper where I realized that I hadn’t thought through a bit completely, even crucial details have been skimmed over in my head, but on the page, I’ve had to address them in detail.

I claim that knowing, even just a little bit, about a topic and loving the topic is enough to justify writing about it. In essence, I’d modify the adage about writing what you know to state: write what you love, which isn’t my invention—this advice has been around for years and Curt mentioned it to me too, so I should say I’d like to reinforce this notion. Write what you love! One can gain considerable amounts of knowledge in a short time, but passion for a topic cannot be researched, cannot be Googled, and without passion, any writer is doomed to fail.