Things have been pretty tough for me the last few weeks and as you can see from my missing blogs, my writing has suffered. Luckily for me, as I continue to mentally mend, I was able to put up my Guest Blogger symbol and Diego Green was the first one with his hand up to say, “Do I have a choice?” And no, no he didn’t. I jest. Of course he did and I’m quite pleased with his blog. It made me think. Not too hard, but just enough. Do you write what you know or do you write outside the box? Can you write about anything you want? Diego says,

Yes, You Can Write What You Want But…

As a writer, I often browse various writing-related message boards. A common sort of question I see posed is: “If I’m an X, can I still write about Y?” or, “Would it be wrong of me to write a character who is Z even if everybody I know is Q?”

The majority of the askers seem to be new and inexperienced writers, or writers who are for the first time attempting to tell a story that may drift outside of their comfort zone or their immediate realm of knowledge. Now the answer to these types of questions seem to fall into one of two categories:

Write whatever you want!

A common argument is that, as artists, we should never be afraid to try new things, to free ourselves from what we know and venture into the unknown. After all, if you are a caucasian heterosexual cisgender male living in the suburbs of middle America then should ALL of your stories be restricted to characters and settings that line up with your own personal background? Of course not, that would be preposterous and would go against your right to artistic freedom.

This argument contends that you shouldn’t allow anyone to bully you into staying away from any sort of portrayal in your fiction. Want to write about a black trans woman living on the mean streets of London even though you don’t know the first thing about any of those things? Who cares! Write what you want! Don’t let the PC police get you down, don’t let “the liberal agenda” stand in the way of your Art!

But of course, this is ridiculous. While it is technically true that you are free to write anything and technically self-publish almost anything your imagination can conjure up, the truth is that you are very unlikely to be read and taken seriously if your characters are unrealistic caricatures or worse, offensive stereotypes. Whether written with malice or just plain ignorance, writing about people and places and things that you don’t have any prior knowledge about will readily gain you ire from readers who can either instantly detect your lies or, with the smallest bit of research (which you declined to do) can easily call you out on your bullshit.

Okay, so if you can’t write whatever you want then…

Only ownvoices are vaid, representation matters!

Representation is incredibly important in our ever-changing world. Of course we should always seek to read the stories that depict different cultures and experiences from the writers who lived it. This is without question.

However, there is a somewhat vocal minority in the writing community who would bar anyone who isn’t from a particular ethnicity/identity/sexuality/gender from writing about it in any meaningful capacity. The argument here is that ONLY ownvoices can be considered legitimate within any sort of discourse, literary or otherwise. For example, following this line of thinking, a bisexual man (especially one in a heteronormative relationship) has no business writing about a homosexual male character as this is a form of appropriation. 

As a queer writer of color myself, I can understand where this type of black and white thinking is coming from. It can be discouraging when you realize how many successful authors belong to the “normal” majority demographic and how few characters in popular media reflect yourself. However, the solution can’t be to simply turn around and act as gatekeepers within the industry that has been keeping us out of the gates for so long. Closing doors is not the pathway to universal acceptance. 

So what then?

There’s no easy answer, unfortunately. You should be fearless in your pursuit of art as a writer and yet tread carefully. Respect where you came from and always hold true to your own experiences but don’t let these limit you as a creator. Rather, allow your life to form the base from which everything you write springs from. 

And if you want to write about something that you know nothing about, well, then you better get learning. Whether that means research through reading or traveling or conversations with people from different walks of life, then so be it. 

Being a good writer is not only about how well you can place one word after another. It’s about your willingness to learn, to grow as a human being, to properly express the human condition. 

And none of that will happen while you’re sitting pretty in your comfort bubble.

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A big thank you for Diego for jumping in this week while I’m away. Check out more work by Diego Green at his website, his twitter and on instagram!