Write what you know. And don't.

"Write what you know" generates a lot of discussion, some arguments, and even some anger.

WRITER 1: What do you mean, "Write what you know"? If I wrote what I knew, I'd write about sunken couches and empty cashew tins.

WRITER 2:  Yes. Do that. Because you have felt the couch. You have eaten the cashews. You know the taste of the salt on your fingers, the corduroy rub of the flattened cushion under your buttocks. That is real. That is pain. Write it. Write!

WRITER 1: I'd rather use my imagination and write what I don't know, thank you very much. I want to write about angels.

WRITER 2: Are you an angel?

WRITER 1: No. I mean, I'm not not an angel. Like, I'm not a bad person, or anything, but I'm not--

WRITER  2: How can you write about angels if you don't know what it's like to be an angel?

This isn't what "Write what you know" means.

In Defense of Ghostwriting...

Justin Bieber is getting a lot of flak for writing his memoirs at 16. Not only is it difficult to buy that a 16-year-old could have enough to say to fill twenty pages, never mind a book, but it’s just as hard—primarily

[Photo: www.deadline.com]

for writers who have been struggling for years to have their own work published—to see “Bieber” and “write” and “book” and “published” in the same sentence. Not because he’s not capable of writing a book—maybe he is, maybe he isn’t—but because we all know what he does, and it’s not writing. He sings. He performs. He does talk shows and guest appearances on “Saturday Night Live.” Who has time to write with that kind of schedule?

“He’ll probably have a ghost writer,” writers who write their own work scoff.