Write What You Know

The best sort of writing is concise and usually very simple. It is also derived out of a place very deep within the self: passion. Passion, with a little acquired know-how, can make all the difference between bad and dispassionate writing, versus bad and passionate writing. This is to say that passion can and will impact bad writing as much as will good. And all the better when used for good.

Dispassionate writing will, inevitably, lead to short, snippy phrases, rather than complete sentences, as well as narrow topics more directed at personal bias than toward relevancy. In short, all the elements of redundant, one sided articles and essays are all derived out of dispassionate writing. At the very least, bad writing can easily be attested to an unfocused state of mind.

First things first: know your topic. Doing this solves two factors. A chosen topic is best chosen out of passion, and so that tackles one hurdle. The other is that knowing your topic allows you to focus on it. Most people tend to struggle with how to approach their topic, as the topic alone usually is not enough to go one; because there are endless ways to approach a single topic. This can be both bad and good, as topics tend to be open-ended. For example, a topic on politics and certain laws come attached with three different ways to approach it: for, against, and neutral. As you can see, some topics, especially controversial ones, come with ready-made attitudes. Use this to your advantage. To know what you want to write about is the literary equivalent of knowing what you want out of life. No other motivation can be as passionate.

People have trouble with this. A lack of inspiration is all that's required to bring down a writer. The old adage points to the muse; all writers need a muse, period. They come in many different forms, but a muse is muse; that is, it's simply a personal element that writers employ to feel passionate about what they write. This is why personal experience within the topic will naturally lend itself to being more intimate. That personal history with the topic is a muse, because it allows the writer to become invested in their words. This, in a nutshell, is what a muse is.

But all this can only be possible upon one thing: write what you know. The phrase comes from Earnest Hemmingway, and it means that writing is simply a matter of staying true to your reality. Don't betray your own intellect, and do not articulate what you cannot articulate in real life. Confused? Look at it this way: don't write a story about poverty until you know it firsthand. Of course, the veracity of that statement depends on the depth of the story; but the underlying ethics of the saying, "Write what you know," cannot be ignored as a progressive state of mind. For any writer, it can mean the difference between writing passionately, and writing dispassionately.

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Sam McKenzy
Student Loans

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