Last Night in Twisted River, by John Irving, and Write What You Know

I'm finishing up John Irving's Last Night in Twisted River and I've been dying to post the following excerpt from the book. And, just so this is clear, this not John Iriving's personal opinion on the subject, "write what you know." I have no idea how John Irving feels about "write what you know." This is John Irving's character's opinion about "write what you know," Danny Angel the writer.

I know I've heard, from teachers and crit groups, that fiction writers should always "write what you know." Thankfully, I never paid attention to any of them. (There's always been a lot of bad advice out there, and now more than ever the Internet has expanded this.) I've always believed fiction should be larger than life.

I'm not commenting on the character Danny Angel the writer's opinion any further. I'm just blogging about it because I think a lot of new writers wonder about, "write what you know," and when I read this I thought I'd share it. I think it sums up the concept of "write what you know" better than anything I've heard or read in years (smile to all the creative writing teachers out there).

This kind of question drove Danny Angel crazy, but he expected too much from journalits; most of them lacked the imagination to believe that anything credible in a novel had been "wholly imagined." And those former journalists who later turned to writing fiction subscribed to that tiresome Hemingway dictum of writing about what you know. What bullshit was this? Novels should be about people you know? How many boring but deadeningly realistic novels can be attributed to this lame and utterly uninspired advice? [image error]