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One question I get from students is if they should “write what they know.”
This is an old adage, and I don’t agree with it.
I think it oversimplifies the capacity of what writers have the ability to write well.
The saying goes back to Mark Twain, who wrote in a character’s voice within The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “Write what you know.” However, Twain did now follow the adage himself, and he wrote it within a fiction narrative. In fact, the narrator of the book is not the author himself, but a young boy—Huck Finn, who has yet to learn the ways of the world and desperately needs to grow and change. Putting these words into Huck’s mouth is one way Twain could be saying, “Clearly, this idea is hogwash.”
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