Is Personal Experience Critical to Your Writing?

All writers have pondered the question of what to write. In answer to that question, for many years students were told to write what you know. This attempt to clarify the dilemma is too incomplete to be satisfactory.

Many new writers may feel lacking in life's experience and wonder if they have the essential knowledge and occurrences from which to draw insight. Some may have lived their entire life in a very small town with limited resources and activities, enjoy a sheltered, quiet, family arena, or are so naive as to have not fully tasted life.

Does this naivety hamper their ability to write good and interesting prose? For a writer all life's experience is filled with information, no matter how insignificant it may seem. It is the gifted writer that can bring forth creative prose from a little information. In fact, if one can not create something out of a little experience, then the task of creating out of a great deal of cognition will be, in all likelihood, just as daunting.

What is the solution then? Where does the writer draw insight? How does the writer choose topics and write with depth, clarity, and believability. How pivotal is individual experience in the process of writing? How vital to the depth of your creative work is the extent of your familiarization and knowledge?

To answer those questions, consider the life of Emily Dickinson. Dickinson is noted in American literature as one of the great American poets, composing 1,775 poems. Yet Miss Dickinson was a spinster who resided for 56 years in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, gradually becoming a recluse. In spite of the lack of outside influence, Dickinson profoundly addressed subjects such as love, death, immortality and nature.

What can we conclude from Emily Dickerson's writings? When considering the craft of writing, it is far more important to possess imagination, curiosity, and empathy than personal experience.

The fact that you want to be a writer is a good indication that you already possess imagination. True understanding comes from within, in the ability to contemplate the experience rather than be immersed in it.

Every stage of your life will offer its own unique perspective. Everything that happens to a writer is material that can be used. Stretch your experiences further by asking, "What if?"

Live life with gusto. Breathe deep, laugh out loud, observe intently, and mull over what you observe. Become vitally alive, be curious, ask questions and your writing will express depth as you weave prose from your observation, experience, and imagination.