DON’T WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW, KNOW WHAT YOU WRITE.
Posted by Chen on / 0 Comments
Sometimes when I sit down to write something (a song, an article, a Facebook manifesto), and inspiration is playing “hide-and-seek,” as it occasionally does, I look to other ways to jump-start my creative engine. A cup of coffee and scrolling through the day’s news (too depressing). An “I’ll just watch one video…oh wait, I’ve been on here for how long?!” session of YouTubing (too time-consuming). Reading poems, stories, magazines, listening to music, and just some good old fashioned do nothing procrastination.
One of my favorite places to go mining for ideas is brainyqoutes.com and similar types of websites. I love finding a saying or widely accepted adage and finding new ways of turning it on its head, changing the way it’s said or rearranging the words to extract a different meaning. The possibilities are endless, and I rarely leave without finding a few golden nuggets.
But today as I was mining away looking for a nugget of a song, I came across an old writing adage that many believe in, and that I myself struggled with early on in my learning process:
Write what you know.
As soon as I saw it, I experienced some sort of visceral negative emotional reaction. To understand why, we will have to take a short detour into my adolescent songwriting psyche.
A big fear of mine as I was starting out, was that I hadn’t lived enough, or I didn’t have an interesting enough life to be a songwriter. I had heard a few of my heroes talk about writing what you know, and assumed they meant writing about your personal experiences, And since I wanted to be like them I tried to follow that advice. This messed with my head quite a bit. I couldn’t find interesting enough things in my life to write about. Who wants to hear a song about waiting in line at Starbucks? Or about that time I got two bags of chips for the price of one cause the extra bag got caught in the spring thingy of the vending machine? (that was a big day for me)
It took me a while before I realized I didn’t have to have experienced the stories I told in order to tell them. I mean, I bet Mick Jagger isn’t immortal, and hasn’t “stolen many a man’s soul and faith” before, and I’m pretty sure Charlie Daniels never bet his soul on a sick fiddle solo. But somehow they both made us feel sorry for the devil. (Though on second thought, Jagger might be immortal… he does know Keith Richards). Tolkien never journeyed across Middle Earth to destroy a piece of jewelry, and Dewey Bunnell never crossed the desert on a horse with no name (who doesn’t name a horse?). C.S Lewis never traveled to another world through a wardrobe, George R.R. Martin never rode a dragon (can you tell I’m a fantasy geek? Who’s excited for the final season of Game Of Thrones?), And to the best of my knowledge Sting has never been a dog (‘Perfect Love…Gone Wrong’, great song from the album Brand New Day. Check it out). Somehow though, they all wrote about those things. They all made us believe them.
I’ve written a song from the point of view of a bullied 14-year-old girl that I read about in a magazine article. I’ve written a song from the point of view of William H. Macy’s character from the movie “Pleasantville.” I’ve written a song from the point of view of a teenage rock star, a lovesick firefly with Don Quixote tendencies, a medieval princess, and even one from the point of view of Kermit The Frog (real class act, nothing but good things to say about Piggy post-breakup). Once I learned I didn’t have to have lived all the stories I wanted to write about; I just ran with it. And well, it worked out.
That negative reaction I had when I found the adage on brainyqouts.com was a flashback to my youth and the time I spent obsessing about what It meant. It wasn’t until I stopped trying to “write what I know” that I truly understood how right that adage was.
“Hold on Chen,” You might say, “I’m pretty sure I just read that you don’t agree with it, and that following that advice caused you all sort of heartache. What gives?”
Following that advice did not cause me heartache. Misunderstanding it did.
The misunderstanding comes from confusing WHAT it is we KNOW. Maybe we have not ridden on the backs of dragons, or had a fiddle duel with the devil, But we can all imagine what it might feel like with the wind in our hair soaring free, or the adrenaline rush of ripping a sick solo in guitar hero. You see, these stories are not about the events that took place, they are about the emotional experience those events inspired. And THAT, we do know. Emotion is something we are all experts in, just because we are human. At some point in our lives, we’ve all been afraid, and we’ve all been Happy. We’ve all been anxious, lonely, hopeful, insecure, overconfident, overwhelmed, vindicated, humbled, elated, sad, or embarrassed. We’ve found love, we’ve lost love, we’ve longed for love. We’ve been hurt, and we’ve hurt others. And because we are all intimately and personally familiar with these feelings, how hard could it be to imagine being jealous of a new suitor? (‘Perfect Love…Gone Wrong’), Or to experience the fear of losing what matters to you most? (‘Don’t Take The Girl,’ Tim McGraw ).
Using our expertise in human emotion, we can tell any story. In Sting’s book, “Lyrics by Sting” (not to be confused with his book “Broken Music” which I couldn’t get through because I found his story about growing up in the shipbuilding industry of Wallsend, to be so boring I’m actually falling asleep telling you about it now), He writes: “Love is the most important word in the lexicon of the songwriter.”
I wholeheartedly agree, but I would add: “Love is the most important word in the lexicon of the songwriter, and empathy, their most important tool.”
As we empathize with the hero of our song/story, and explore how they would feel in the set of circumstances we create for them, we are seeing through their eyes and experiencing their story. But the emotions are our own. And that’s how, despite having never set foot in their imaginary worlds, Tolkien climbed Mount Doom, Martin rode a dragon, Sting WAS a dog, and Daniels won his soul, and a golden fiddle to boot.
When we achieve this, when we truly inhabit the point of view from which our story is told, we don’t so much write what we know, we KNOW what we write.
I saw one more quote this morning. A quote that I’ve always loved and aspired to (Attributed to Harlan Howard, and later a Sara Evans song and album title, among other things). When I saw it, I realized that if you do in fact write what you know and know what you write, and what you know is yourself, you will always get: Three chords and the truth.
That was the quote. Was that not clear? I mean you can have more than three chords…If you must… don’t get sidetracked, the important part is the truth bit.
Award winning and multi platinum selling songwriter/producer Chen Neeman's songs have been recorded by artists such as Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Joe Jonas, Zendaya, and The Muppets, among others. Chen is dedicated to helping aspiring songwriters learn how to write better songs through personalized one-on-one coaching sessions via Skype, FaceTime, or in person at his L.A Studio.
Find out more about Chen’s Pro Songwriting Coaching, at HitSongCoach.com