A very short quotation this week. I'm sure everyone has heard the saying "write what you know" and much space and time has been given to debating it as a piece of writing advice - after all no fiction writer has experienced everything they've written about. However, occasionally a writer comes up with a great reason why sometimes it's best to leave a subject you know nothing about well alone.
Here is a quotation from legendary Irish novelist Maeve Binchy that I read in
Writing Magazine this month (originally from the
Daily Mail, 2007) about why she doesn't write sex scenes into her books. Claiming it's nothing to do with being holy or moral, she said...
"You see, I've never been at an orgy and I wouldn't know where legs should be and arms should be."
Fair enough.
That's witty - but surely it's also a cop-out? Otherwise only murderers and policemen could write crime novels etc etc! For me half the fun of writing is writing about situations I've never been in nor am ever likely to be.
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