Write What You kNOwPE

I love the advice, “Write what you know” until I think about all the stories and scripts about hitmen, serial killers, vampires, murder revenge… uh, what the fuck do you all know?!

I get it, though. “Write what you know” isn’t necessarily, “write about your 22nd year on Earth with great detail and no variance from the truth whatsoever.” It’s more “write the things you know, and incorporate them into your story, no matter how big or small you make them.” It makes sense. Whether you write a very-close-to-reality story based on something that happened to you when you were a teenager, or you are writing about a hitman who has the same bad habits as you and the same awful predicament in his love life, your experience will come through with great interest. Any time you can make a character similar to yourself or a friend or a family member, you make them that much more real to the reader. Same goes for any situations you write in your pieces, not just the characters.

I thought about the “write what you know” when I’ve looked back on stories of mine that were well received in any capacity. I wrote some sci-fi stories that had been published. Two of them had a lot to do with the government’s greed and, oftentimes, complete disregard for human beings and really any beings. Those are things that strike a chord with me. The lack of compassion that comes through from many big corporations and “big people” who essentially run countries… run the world… it infuriates me. Seeing how companies can treat living beings like they are trash, it is something that is often on my mind. Those are themes in these stories, and I suppose my feelings on that matter come through, even in a sci-fi.

I’ve written stories about ghosts and aliens, and I won’t say which ones, but they may or may not have been based on real occurrences in my life where I am 99% certain I wasn’t alone as a live human being. I know ghosts and aliens are entities that many people don’t believe in, usually because they’ve never seen evidence of them. Quick story, in 1797, if you told the Western world a story about a semi-aquatic mammal that laid eggs, they’d tell you it didn’t exist. Because they’d never seen such a thing. In 1798, Europeans first encountered the platypus in Australia. Just because you have no evidence of something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Excuse the tangent. In any event, paranormal and alien stories I’ve written have gotten some praise and have been well received. I’ve been told how spooky they were, how frightening and real certain parts seemed.

Maybe because I was writing what I knew.

And sure, I took many liberties with these stories. Because you got to write what you kNOwPE. The entire story can’t be your experience. You’re writing fiction after all. So, I have decided, many times you have to write what you kNOwPE. Take some truth, sprinkle it in, but bake that cake with a big load of fiction dough. Sounds tasty, right? I feel that usually works out as a great formula for me. Somewhere between 10-30% what I know. Anywhere from 70-90% what I nope.

Well, I will still write stories outside of that formula, sometimes with a formula that is almost the exact opposite. But I tend to write more fantastical things, more speculative fiction, more horror and fantasy and sci-fi. And though I’d love to say that I have been to distant planets, and that I’ve traveled thousands of miles across a country in the blink of an eye, and that I’ve come to face-to-face with an undead entity rising from the quicksand (I wouldn’t really love to be able to say that)... I haven’t. But I can say, for those stories, I’ve incorporated true feelings of my own and made them the characters, I’ve included places I have seen both in real life and in my dreams which are so vivid in my brain that I swear they wallpaper the inside of my brain, and I’ve described the very real horror and emotions that I have felt in moments where I was supposed to be alone but there was very clearly noise coming from elsewhere in the house. And then… I whipped up some fiction for the rest of those stories. I was writing what I kNOwPE. Because, quicksand monster, um, Hell NOPE!

But I am happy to say that the original “Write what you know” advice has worked out fantastically for me. Because as of today, I had a story published in On The High Literary Journal. It is in their 5th issue, Metamorphosis, and my story is titled “How Things Are Here.”

Take a read, if you please. (Find me in the Table of Contents. Page 33.)

It’s a fairly short one, and this one, this followed a formula more of, 70-90% what I know and only 10-30% what I nope. I obviously had to take some liberties but a large portion of this story revolved around what actually happened to me, and what I actually know, or what I actually knew. And I suppose, my feelings, my emotions, my personality comes through, and maybe, just maybe, the truth in the writing draws the reader in.

I see the value in writing things that are close to your heart or that have honest truth inside of you. Clearly, it made this piece interesting enough to be chosen for publication by On The High, to whom I am very grateful to. Very excited to have my story published with them.

And as I always like to do, to keep my ego in check, because I did just talk so much about stories of mine that were well received and published and yadda yadda yadda, everything is going perfectly over there for Steve, right? My running count. I have submitted to 226 different publications and contests. 203 unsuccessful. 7 successful. 1 in which I moved on from round 1 to round 2 in the NYC Midnight competition, so I’ll count that as one more success. And 15 pending. Among the “Unsuccessful” I do have an honorable mention, three that made it to a second round, one script that made it to a Semifinalist round just recently, and another story that made it to a Top 50. Those accolades will be successes in their own right as I am able to mention those when and if I shop them around. But still, not easy, nothing is guaranteed. I am so happy to be published again as it is so difficult to achieve, and I am continuing to write what I know and write what I kNOwPE.