Article inspired by various speakers at the Backspace Writers Conference 2012 including Jessica Anya Blau, Jael McHenry, Lauren Baratz-Logsted, and David Robbins, among others.
"Write what you know."
Every writer has heard it. As a writing teacher, I'm guilty of having said it to my students. It seems like such logical advice; one can write more convincingly about the experiences he has had in life: the jobs he's held, the places he's visited, the crushing relationships he's started and ended. But if you really think about it, what would books be like if writers only wrote what they knew? To start, there'd be no fantasy, no dystopian tales, no science fiction, so good-bye Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and Star Wars. Shades of Greywould only exist if someone was saucy enough to admit to living such a lifestyle. We'd know for sure Stephen King ought to be locked up. Even realistic fiction would vanish. Readers looking for a story would be left only with memoirs.
"The human experience is universal." - Jessica Anya Blau
Of course, most writing instructors telling their students to write what they know probably had a less literal meaning in mind. In a more broad sense, most writers should and do write what they know. They write about the experiences we share as humans (or fantastical creatures with human qualities). Writers take in the world around them, experiencing life's best and worst moments through close observations of family, friends, coworkers, even people in the news. These observations, coupled with writers' own life experiences, give them an entry point. Imagination takes them the rest of the way.