Why I'm Writing: There's No One Better Qualified to Write My Story

This year during Camp NaNoWriMo, writers of all sorts are sharing what they love to pen, and why you should join them. Today, Sheridan Jobbins, screenwriter of Easy Virtue , tells us why the only thing you absolutely have to do is write what you know:

Okay, so shining blade of talent Jane Austen said it first, and I’m just jumping onto her crinoline coat tails, but when she advised her cousin to ‘write what you know’ she delivered a diamond of wisdom so pure it’s possible to look straight through it.  

For example, you there! You putting your mulish head down and saying: but I want to write science fiction! Or war stories! Or historical novels of sweeping grandeur and startling innovation… Only I’ve never been an intergalactic bounty hunter who had their organs harvested by a time-traveling scientist on an intergalactic fact finding mission.

Take heart: I don’t think Austen was being prescriptive about your story or subject matter. I certainly don’t think she meant for us all to write autobiographies. I think she was giving advice about emotional truth and authenticity.

I see it like this: if you like research, then research. If you like science fiction, then you probably already know the forms and function of the genre. If you are a teenager, then you are able to tell me more about the condition of a 16 year old’s heart than I remember—and you can bring any and all of that to your story if you want to. But what you really bring, is the desire to bring it at all. 

And that is the most liberating piece of advice I have to give. You can be naked, lustful, angry, hurt, murderous, forgiving, bull-headedly yourself in fiction.

It’s like this: in all of time there is no one better qualified to be you. There never was, and there never will be. And that wild, raw, uncensored originality is what will differentiate you from every other writer for all time. So there’s no point in trying. There’s no point in trying to be someone else. There’s no point in even thinking. It’s like George Lucas got Yoda to say in Star Wars: “Do or do not. There is no try.”

So there you are now, sitting at your steam punk computer, with your feather-tipped stylus poised to commence. And the most valuable creative gift you have—the one thing you bring to your story that will levitate you out of the crowd for all eternity—is you. Sexy, angry, boring, brilliant, nutty, flighty, lazy, marvelous, you. 

So what do you know?

Sheridan Jobbins  is a third-generation Australian film maker. She currently mentors and edits other writers through the scriptwriting/development process, and lives in Geneva, Switzerland with her husband, Scott, and dog, Pamela.

Photo by Flickr user dullhunk.