Educational

In many books on writing I've seen, the authors suggest that you should write about something you know.
I don't really think that is right.

There isn't anything new under the sun, in a way. It has been my belief that all stories are in the Bible and Shakespeare, and that all others come down to the same basic - I don't want to say plots, but the same basic lines. We write because we want to put our thoughts about something into words, and the things that make our minds so full we need to pour the words onto a page stay the same whether we live in the 1st or the 15th or the 21st century.

"Wes das Herz voll ist, des geht der Mund über", Martin Luther said. Whose heart is full, that person's mouth overflows.

So in a way, we do write about things we know, because our own feelings, our own thoughts and passions and memories and fears and dreams, will be on the page when we're done.

But the little details - those change, and while it might be easier to start writing something you know, so you don't need to do research, I believe it is in a way more rewarding to put those basic lines into a context that is not in your immediate sphere, that requires you to reach out for something new to you, that requires reading and learning and thought.

This is rather new to me, actually, which probably explains why I am getting all philosophical about it. I used to stick very much with things I knew. My heroines have tended to not the golden-haired, green-eyed, but definitely the shameless self-insertion Mary Sues. The problems my characters would face were such that I could wrap my mind around with no great stretch of imagination. Now, I find myself challenging myself more, trying out how my values and ideas would look transferred into new contexts that are unusual to me. And at the same time, I'm researching tangible, practical things that might play a role in those settings, going deeper than just the basic facts I picked up over years of a halfway decently broad education.
I'm trying to get myself out of my comfort zone of what in my family is called blessed half knowledge.


I found that I am more comfortable around people who are passionate and well-versed on something, no matter how small the field of interest. I can listen to my brother talk about the political shenanigans of some ancient Roman emperor or to a friend explaining his plans for a piece of forest he tends, as long as I can feel the passion underneath.
I'm not sure I have that same passion. Maybe I've taken care, over the years, to not be passionate about things, as it makes life so much easier if you can move on with a shrug. I don't really care about the reasons; especially as this particular line of thinking would just come out to say I am the way I am because my classmates always were so mean to me - and I think that is a shoddy excuse when you're 26.

So I'm educating myself, giving myself a chance to find something about which I can feel deeply.

And I'm writing. When my heart is full, the words flowing out of my mouth don't have to be the same as the ones in my heart, but they can still convey something, and that maybe can be the essence of those feelings, distilled to the point where they might not only ring with me for today and in my current mood, but might last longer than a passing fancy.



In one of the stories in the Exchange, a poem was posted that I instantly liked:

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as a pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud;
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but not bowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and fears
Looms but the horror ofd the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.