Write What You Know

Best advice ever given
or a thorn in your psyche?



Followed literally and many have given up hope.
Questioning if they've lived enough,
experienced enough,
to have anything worth saying for someone to want to sit down and read.

However well meaning a phrase might be
you can never allow the words of others to become the be all,
end all;
especially, not the end of the very essence of you
or the stories you've been born to share.

The fact you're alive
is enough of a state of being
for you to begin.



Meant as a place to start,
a launching pad,
not meant to paralyze.

You simply have to get into touch with what's around you.
Like an English teacher who takes her class outdoors
asking them to write about nature using their five senses.
The outcome of which might become something like this:

"I feel the brisk, cool breeze as it gently rolls over me.
I feel the wind caressing my hair, flipping and twisting it ever so slightly.
I feel the hard ground supporting my body and the wet,
dew filled grass spring up around me.
I hear the grass near my ear rustling together,
creating a soft spoken noise that I have to strain to hear.
The birds singing their songs, calling to each other,
saying to one another, things we can't understand.
I see the clouds glide ever so slowly by
and the rays of sunlight as they stream down from the heavens on high.
The leaves are creating rainbows as they hang from the trees
and as they fall and float through the sky.
The rustling of the limbs and leaves of the trees almost puts me to sleep.
I taste the air around me, the briskness and crispness of it.
I am able to touch the dried, crumbled leaves that lay near me
and the damp grass that surrounds me.
Nature and my five sense are able to make me realize
how wonderful creation really is."
(Voices Anthology ~ Nature and My Five Senses ~ Jenny Postema)

Writing comes not just from what you know
but from your observations and vantage point;
from your life and the lives of those around you;
from writing factually or turning your reality into fantasy.



It carries no limits.
It's okay to write outside the margins.
There's no box except the one of your own making;
oh, the places you'll go 
if you let your imagination flow.

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