The Steve Laube Agency

It may be the most common writing advice of all time: “Write what you know.” It’s often misunderstood or misapplied; but it means, basically, draw from your own experience, emotion, environment, and passions to produce the most authentic creative work possible … for you.

That’s not bad advice, as far as it goes. But it’s not “gospel.” After all, Nobel honoree Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day, calls it “the most stupid thing I’ve heard.”

I’m not yet a Nobel prizewinner (nominations are being invited this month), but I mostly agree. I think there’s a better approach: Write what you want to know.

Many of us—especially, may I say, those of us who write from a Christian perspective, fueled by the vast storehouse of divinely inspired biblical wisdom and millennia of church tradition and practice—adopt a somewhat didactic, even stentorian, voice in our writing. We make pronouncements. We have “God’s honest truth” on our side, so we tell our readers what they need to know.

That approach may have worked better when I first began writing in the 1800s, but I’m learning that it’s not the best tack these days. Twenty-first century readers prefer to be participants in the process of discovery. The tone that more often invites and convinces a reader is less “here’s what I know and you should too” and more “Let’s explore this together and see what happens.” It’s more a journey of discovery than a pronouncement from on high.

That doesn’t mean we don’t share biblical truth. Not at all. But it’s much more fun (for reader and writer) to track a journey of discovery and experience that takes both of us to a new place, as companions on the trail.

So try it. Don’t write what you know; write what you want to know … and be … and do ... and see what happens.