Don’t Ask Me

- Intermezzo -

'Write what you know.'

The problem is that writing isn’t interesting until you do the complete opposite. But I only found out once I followed this advice.

After I had done it enough times, I came to the realization that what I knew wasn’t worth writing about. The reason it took so long was how certain I felt while writing this way.

Below the surface of this advice, there’s the sense that you're supposed to know what you're doing. The only thing I came to know was how much of a know-it-all I had become.

I didn’t like this.

This feeling of certainty was something I was trying to avoid, since it had always done more harm than good. So the only way to get rid of it was to flip it on its head:

'Write what you don’t know.'

Just how does one do this?

Well, I can only tell you what worked for me.

I read my way to an answer, not that I was looking for one. But I found it, after I had gone through enough writers who wrote this way.

I started to write about my own experiences–what I had been through, the things that happened to me, the stuff I remembered.

I didn’t understand what any of it meant.

Yet when the meaning became clear, I found there was only more that I didn’t know.

I guess that’s why I find it hard to stop–what I know is extremely limited and what I don’t know is not.

I’m not at all confident with what I end up writing and I used to think that was bad. Because if I was so sure of things, then the writing would never surprise me.

That’s when it’s the most fun, when you end up with something you never planned on making; you made it because you didn’t plan on it.

The question isn’t if this means my writing is any good, but whether or not I care in the first place.

So, what’s the answer to that?

Don’t ask me, I have no idea what I’m doing.