Write What You (Don’t) Know

Those of us who write have heard the phrase, “Write what you know.”

But what do I write about once I realize I know nothing?

A karate teacher of mine told our class once, “We don’t say we know karate.” She went on to explain what this meant. As I understood it, one can never fully ‘know’ karate, it’s a vast system. The moment we tell ourselves we know it, we’re both puffing ourselves up and limiting our ability to learn more. Rather, we say we “study” karate, or “train in” karate. This notion of “not knowing” has stuck with me for the last fifteen years.

I think this “not knowing” can be applied to anything. The moment we say we “know” something, we find someone else who knows the same thing, but has an entirely different understanding. We can learn things, have an understanding of them, but “knowing” them assumes we possess access to the full, unquestionable truth of a thing. I don’t think we do. I know I don’t. (Actually, I don’t know I know I don’t!)

Plus, aren’t we all filtering whatever knowledge we have through the lens of our specific life experience anyway? And how can one tiny person’s life experience encompass a word so big and finite as “know?”

So, if I know nothing, what do I write about?

Instead of writing what I “know,” I land on writing what I “experience.” Things I’ve seen, things I’ve felt, connections I sense. Things I’ve learned that I want to explore. Whimsical things or inventions that seem like they want to be shared.

(At any point I can replace the verb “write” with “draw,” “paint,” “dance,” “sing,” “be.”)

While what I’ve learned, my education, my acquired “knowledge” is important and informs my self-expression, the knowledge itself isn’t the essence of that expression. My aim is to “write,” “dance,” “be”– express in all of those ways from the truth of my own experience, my own “be-ing.” In this sense, I don’t have to create from the kind of freaked out, authoritative place of having to “know something.”

How refreshing!