Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.
Interpretation
The quote criticizes the advice to only write about familiar subjects, suggesting it limits creativity and leads to uninspired work.
Joe Haldeman's quote challenges the conventional wisdom of writing only about what one knows. He argues that this adage stifles creativity and results in subpar literature, as it confines writers to their own experiences rather than encouraging them to explore broader themes and ideas that can enrich their storytelling.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to encourage participants to break out of their comfort zones.
Archie became absolutely still, afraid that the rapid beating of his heart might betray his sudden knowledge, the proof of what he'd always suspected, not only of Brother Leon but most grownups, most adults: they were vulnerable, running scared, open to invasion.
When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.
So your emotional state really has a lot to do with what you're thinking about and what you're paying attention to.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
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