On "Write only what you know"

[Vix_Giovanni]

Fair enough:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/26/learn/

“Quote Investigator: The earliest match known to QI appeared in a letter sent in 1885 to painter Anthon van Rappard from Vincent van Gogh who was immersed in the creation of the landmark canvas
'The Potato Eaters'.”

.

Wait. Did anyone actually read the original Van Gogh letter?

“The work in question, painting the peasants, is such laborious work that the extremely weak would never even embark on it. And I have at least embarked on it and have laid certain foundations, which isn’t exactly the easiest part of the job! And I’ve grasped some solid and useful things in drawing and in painting, more firmly than you think, my dear friend. But I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it.”

Het werk in kwestie, ’t schilderen van de boeren, is een zóó zwaar werk dat de uiterst zwakken van zelf wel er niet eens aan beginnen.– En ik ben er ten minste aan begonnen en heb zekere fondamenten gelegd, wat niet precies ’t makkelijkst is van de karwei! En in teekenen en in schilderen heb ik sommige vaste en nuttige dingen beet, vaster dan ge denkt amice. Maar ik maak steeds wat ik nog niet kan om het te leeren kunnen.–

This quote has nothing to do with creating art about an area of culture/life/science/professions etc that you’re not familiar. Van Gogh wasn’t commenting that he can paint poor potato farmers though he himself doesn’t farm potatoes! In fact, he actually lived and worked with the subjects for a period of time.

The point of the (mis) quote was that he was defending his work against criticisms by Anthon van Rappard, a friend/fellow artist who’d said the work isn’t very good. In context, Van Gogh’s statement is pretty clear; 1) he felt his mastery of his skills as a painter would come by challenging himself to improve with this subject matter and 2) the comment was made because he was on the defensive about a painting that meant a lot to him and a friend said it sucked.

This quote seems comparable to someone trying to defend weak writing by saying, “Look, this is just my first piece so don’t be harsh. I can only get better by doing it more.”


The closest explanation to what’s being discussed in the thread was the LA Times’ Fred Beerstein anecdote:

Beerstein tells the story of a man who wanted to learn to play the violin. The man went to the concert hall, listened attentively and then went home and tried to start playing. To his astonishment, he found that he could not do it. “He was terrible. His response to that was: ‘Next time, I’ll sit closer.’

“The point is,” Beerstein said, “you need to do it in order to learn how to do it. The same is true for teaching.”

The Beerstein quote of “you need to do it in order to learn how to do it” seems the best aligned, where mastery is both a practical skill set and a body of research: “teaching” could be substituted with “writing”.

 

[SimonDoom]

Wait. Did anyone actually read the original Van Gogh letter?

“The work in question, painting the peasants, is such laborious work that the extremely weak would never even embark on it. And I have at least embarked on it and have laid certain foundations, which isn’t exactly the easiest part of the job! And I’ve grasped some solid and useful things in drawing and in painting, more firmly than you think, my dear friend. But I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it.”

Het werk in kwestie, ’t schilderen van de boeren, is een zóó zwaar werk dat de uiterst zwakken van zelf wel er niet eens aan beginnen.– En ik ben er ten minste aan begonnen en heb zekere fondamenten gelegd, wat niet precies ’t makkelijkst is van de karwei! En in teekenen en in schilderen heb ik sommige vaste en nuttige dingen beet, vaster dan ge denkt amice. Maar ik maak steeds wat ik nog niet kan om het te leeren kunnen.–

This quote has nothing to do with creating art about an area of culture/life/science/professions etc that you’re not familiar. Van Gogh wasn’t commenting that he can paint poor potato farmers though he himself doesn’t farm potatoes! In fact, he actually lived and worked with the subjects for a period of time.

The point of the (mis) quote was that he was defending his work against criticisms by Anthon van Rappard, a friend/fellow artist who’d said the work isn’t very good. In context, Van Gogh’s statement is pretty clear; 1) he felt his mastery of his skills as a painter would come by challenging himself to improve with this subject matter and 2) the comment was made because he was on the defensive about a painting that meant a lot to him and a friend said it sucked.

This quote seems comparable to someone trying to defend weak writing by saying, “Look, this is just my first piece so don’t be harsh. I can only get better by doing it more.”


The closest explanation to what’s being discussed in the thread was the LA Times’ Fred Beerstein anecdote:

Beerstein tells the story of a man who wanted to learn to play the violin. The man went to the concert hall, listened attentively and then went home and tried to start playing. To his astonishment, he found that he could not do it. “He was terrible. His response to that was: ‘Next time, I’ll sit closer.’

“The point is,” Beerstein said, “you need to do it in order to learn how to do it. The same is true for teaching.”

The Beerstein quote of “you need to do it in order to learn how to do it” seems the best aligned, where mastery is both a practical skill set and a body of research: “teaching” could be substituted with “writing”.

Excellent points, and they underscore that the one indisputably true and valuable part of the adage "Write only what you know" is the single word "Write."

 

[8letters]

All my stories are completely made up. People seem to like them.

 

[jehoram]

Like his women. Lots of macho men and dwarves, bucolic hobbits, but idealised and ethereal women.

Yeah, that's true. But a lot of that stems from the templates in mythic storytelling that he used, including Beowulf, the Scandinavian eddas, German folk tales, and the like. No roles there for heroic women that I could remember, although I confess that I slept through a lot of those lectures.

I've written on many subjects on which I've had no personal experience ... incest and swinging, to name just two. But I figure that if I can make the subject real enough to the main characters, and take them through what I feel they'd have to encounter, I can make it real to me. After that, it's up to me to convey the same level of reality to the reader.

Come to think of it, that's why I try to ground my stories in events that could conceivably happen, with people with ordinary bodies and ordinary libidos. The fact that this is a sort of character that the reader has actually met somewhere makes it easier for the reader to accept the character's reality and thereby buy into the story's "reality." Otherwise, I don't think I have the writing chops to pull off this sort of stunt.

 

[oggbashan]

All my stories are completely made up. People seem to like them.

Most of mine have incidents from real life but are fiction. SOME people seem to like them. Some hate them.

 

[Hypoxia]

Write what you think you know but don't stop there.

 

[BrokenSpokes]

Saw on FB a Vincent Van Gogh quote that I thought was a good counter to the "write what you know" writing advice (although I agree with "write what you know" as long as it includes "expand through research what you know"):

"I am always doing what I cannot do yet in order to learn how to do it."

I’ve written a romance series with some small success based on a group of friends/family in a band, and the main character flies a helicopter. I cannot play any instrument not have I ever ridden in a helicopter. So I think if you have sufficient interest in something and are willing to do research, you don’t have to know something to write well.

 

[ColdAssIce]

"Write what you know" doesn't mean the author has to have experienced everything first-hand.

Men are from Earth, women are from Earth, non-binary people too. Most men know plenty of women; a man who listens when those women talk about their lives, and makes a bit of an effort to understand the areas where women might experience the world differently, already knows enough to write female characters.

Writing a character from a different culture that I've never experienced, that's much more of a challenge than writing a different gender.

That’s sort of my point, there’s not any need to experience something first hand in order to write it well.

I do agree with others on the post that depending on what you’re writing, it’s important to do research- especially for period or culture based pieces.

Additionally though, knowledge is subjective- for some that knowledge is experience based. For others knowledge is research based; of course depending on what you’re referring to, the necessity of “knowledge” as well as the type varies. When writing I believe research is enough, but in performance you need to experience.

Of course anyone could debate what kind of knowledge is best for any endeavor. Despite what the quote may specifically be referring to, I’ve seen plenty of people make assertions that people shouldn’t be writing for other cultures, genders, blah blah—because they don’t “know” what they’re talking about based off of their lack of personal experience. I wholeheartedly disagree with the notion that personal experience is necessary in writing.

I do think it never hurts to do some research, but it isn’t always necessary and it’d be an injustice to try caging people into only writing what they “know.” Culture and gender are very specific, but there are other variables- age, social status, economic status... etc. Some can be felt more so than anything else, in which case “knowledge” isn’t necessary. One can mentally put themselves in a different headspace to identify with a particular thing like age difference or economic status and do just fine. However some are more objective, like culture, and encourage research to be done well.

 

[ChadAlpha]

I think it's good advice as long as you take it the right way. Just like, as BC points out "show don't tell."

Second,if you write about a subject with which you have no personal experience, make some effort to learn something about it. 98% of readers will be satisifed with a rough approximation of knowledge of a subject; they won't demand Ph.D. level knowledge. Some effort, not extreme effort, and certainly not true proficiency, is enough.

Wait. Did anyone actually read the original Van Gogh letter?

“The work in question, painting the peasants, is such laborious work that the extremely weak would never even embark on it. And I have at least embarked on it and have laid certain foundations, which isn’t exactly the easiest part of the job! And I’ve grasped some solid and useful things in drawing and in painting, more firmly than you think, my dear friend. But I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it.”

This quote has nothing to do with creating art about an area of culture/life/science/professions etc that you’re not familiar. Van Gogh wasn’t commenting that he can paint poor potato farmers though he himself doesn’t farm potatoes! In fact, he actually lived and worked with the subjects for a period of time.

The point of the (mis) quote was that he was defending his work against criticisms by Anthon van Rappard, a friend/fellow artist who’d said the work isn’t very good.In context, Van Gogh’s statement is pretty clear; 1) he felt his mastery of his skills as a painter would come by challenging himself to improve with this subject matter and 2) the comment was made because he was on the defensive about a painting that meant a lot to him and a friend said it sucked.


This quote seems comparable to someone trying to defend weak writing by saying, “Look, this is just my first piece so don’t be harsh. I can only get better by doing it more.”


The closest explanation to what’s being discussed in the thread was the LA Times’ Fred Beerstein anecdote:

Beerstein tells the story of a man who wanted to learn to play the violin. The man went to the concert hall, listened attentively and then went home and tried to start playing. To his astonishment, he found that he could not do it. “He was terrible. His response to that was: ‘Next time, I’ll sit closer.’

“The point is,” Beerstein said, “you need to do it in order to learn how to do it. The same is true for teaching.”

The Beerstein quote of “you need to do it in order to learn how to do it” seems the best aligned, where mastery is both a practical skill set and a body of research: “teaching” could be substituted with “writing”.

Excellent points, and they underscore that the one indisputably true and valuable part of the adage "Write only what you know" is the single word "Write."

I read the letters; thanks for the heads up, Vix. They read like an epic rap battle lol! Interesting and insightful. My favorite is Letter #504: "My dear friend Rappard I just received your letter — to my surprise. You hereby get it back." LOL; that's cold!


BTW if anyone else is interested, all the letters are here; you can sort by correspondent to see only his Rappard commc'ns.


@Simon, it seems Van Gogh is making the opposite point that neither is art just "mak[ing] some effort to learn something about it" nor does it distill to a single "just do it" philosophy of, for our purposes, "write". He specifically, and frequently, argues that while anyone can learn to paint beautifully (or, here, write well) only true artists can/will familiarize themselves with a subject to capture its raison d’etre. He is highly critical of Rappard and others for assuming they can know the subject they're painting without immersing themselves.


As @Vix, touched on, Van Gogh railed against such cursive depictions. Imho, she could have gone further about the misinterpretation of Van Gogh’s quote... the whole point of the OP was whether we writers agree/disagree with Van Gogh's authoritative opinion, but the popularized quote is so inaccurate that it actually says the opposite of Van Gogh's letters! Van Gogh's clear that he feels art’s purpose is to authentically express lived experience, that he does not value painting for painting’s sake or believe that improved technique is an accomplishment in and of itself, and sees painting as one—minor—tool for unearthing the authentic (Letters 514 & 516).

Additionally though, knowledge is subjective- for some that knowledge is experience based. For others knowledge is research based; of course depending on what you’re referring to, the necessity of “knowledge” as well as the type varies. When writing I believe research is enough, but in performance you need to experience.

Of course anyone could debate what kind of knowledge is best for any endeavor. Despite what the quote may specifically be referring to, I’ve seen plenty of people make assertions that people shouldn’t be writing for other cultures, genders, blah blah—because they don’t “know” what they’re talking about based off of their lack of personal experience. I wholeheartedly disagree with the notion that personal experience is necessary in writing.

I do think it never hurts to do some research, but it isn’t always necessary and it’d be an injustice to try caging people into only writing what they “know.” Culture and gender are very specific, but there are other variables- age, social status, economic status... etc. Some can be felt more so than anything else, in which case “knowledge” isn’t necessary. One can mentally put themselves in a different headspace to identify with a particular thing like age difference or economic status and do just fine. However some are more objective, like culture, and encourage research to be done well.

You seem to be confusing “knowledge” and “personal experience”.

Knowledge is fact based and comes from education and relevant experience. Knowledge can change but it's not a moving target; it doesn't vary except when it's built on by new and relevant facts. Personal experience is the moment-to-moment experience and sensory awareness of internal and external events. People often collectively share similar personal experiences, and often form similar opinions and ideology around those experiences.

Since this thread is about this specific Van Gogh quote: using his letters and the related painting The Potato Eaters to illustrate, Van Gogh "knew" what he was painting about because he lived, talked, worked and ate with the farmers, and by doing that, he made a realistic painting. The Potato Eaters is a high point in art history because until then, most artists, though willing to put lots of time in studying something like a rose or a piece of fruit or a beautiful woman, were quick to disregard the dimensionality of the poor, etc, and many artists would just make things up because they overestimated that they could "put themselves in the headspace" of those people.

Another reason The Potato Eaters is considered masterful is because Van Gogh paints the specifics but doesn’t impose his own opinions and feelings. This was hard work, as he explains in his letters; his struggle was to capture the farmers authentically while also preserving their own authentic voice.


PS.: I want to make sure it’s very clear that my thoughts are solely related to Van Gogh’s letters, artwork and the discussed quote and not in any way a comment on anyone's ability to convey via written word an experience they may or may not have lived.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I read the letters; thanks for the heads up, Vix. They read like an epic rap battle lol! Interesting and insightful. My favorite is Letter #504: "My dear friend Rappard I just received your letter — to my surprise. You hereby get it back." LOL; that's cold!


BTW if anyone else is interested, all the letters are here; you can sort by correspondent to see only his Rappard commc'ns.


@Simon, it seems Van Gogh is making the opposite point that neither is art just "mak[ing] some effort to learn something about it" nor does it distill to a single "just do it" philosophy of, for our purposes, "write". He specifically, and frequently, argues that while anyone can learn to paint beautifully (or, here, write well) only true artists can/will familiarize themselves with a subject to capture its raison d’etre. He is highly critical of Rappard and others for assuming they can know the subject they're painting without immersing themselves.


As @Vix, touched on, Van Gogh railed against such cursive depictions. Imho, she could have gone further about the misinterpretation of Van Gogh’s quote... the whole point of the OP was whether we writers agree/disagree with Van Gogh's authoritative opinion, but the popularized quote is so inaccurate that it actually says the opposite of Van Gogh's letters! Van Gogh's clear that he feels art’s purpose is to authentically express lived experience, that he does not value painting for painting’s sake or believe that improved technique is an accomplishment in and of itself, and sees painting as one—minor—tool for unearthing the authentic (Letters 514 & 516).

I'm glad that I'm not the only nerdy one! I didn't read many of the letters, just the referenced and it's followups (you're a fast reader!! or, did you already know a lot about Van Gogh?) but they are pretty awesome lol. Rap battle's a perfect description.

I tend to couch things here but yes, as you said, this seems to be a case where the popular quote doesn't at all match Van Gogh's original writing, and his letter shows that he'd disagree with the proposition that one can create art about what s/he doesn't know.

You seem to be confusing “knowledge” and “personal experience”....

Ditto.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Wait. Did anyone actually read the original Van Gogh letter?

“The work in question, painting the peasants, is such laborious work that the extremely weak would never even embark on it. And I have at least embarked on it and have laid certain foundations, which isn’t exactly the easiest part of the job! And I’ve grasped some solid and useful things in drawing and in painting, more firmly than you think, my dear friend. But I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it.”

Het werk in kwestie, ’t schilderen van de boeren, is een zóó zwaar werk dat de uiterst zwakken van zelf wel er niet eens aan beginnen.– En ik ben er ten minste aan begonnen en heb zekere fondamenten gelegd, wat niet precies ’t makkelijkst is van de karwei! En in teekenen en in schilderen heb ik sommige vaste en nuttige dingen beet, vaster dan ge denkt amice. Maar ik maak steeds wat ik nog niet kan om het te leeren kunnen.–

This quote has nothing to do with creating art about an area of culture/life/science/professions etc that you’re not familiar. Van Gogh wasn’t commenting that he can paint poor potato farmers though he himself doesn’t farm potatoes! In fact, he actually lived and worked with the subjects for a period of time.

The point of the (mis) quote was that he was defending his work against criticisms by Anthon van Rappard, a friend/fellow artist who’d said the work isn’t very good. In context, Van Gogh’s statement is pretty clear; 1) he felt his mastery of his skills as a painter would come by challenging himself to improve with this subject matter and 2) the comment was made because he was on the defensive about a painting that meant a lot to him and a friend said it sucked.

This quote seems comparable to someone trying to defend weak writing by saying, “Look, this is just my first piece so don’t be harsh. I can only get better by doing it more.”


The closest explanation to what’s being discussed in the thread was the LA Times’ Fred Beerstein anecdote:

Beerstein tells the story of a man who wanted to learn to play the violin. The man went to the concert hall, listened attentively and then went home and tried to start playing. To his astonishment, he found that he could not do it. “He was terrible. His response to that was: ‘Next time, I’ll sit closer.’

“The point is,” Beerstein said, “you need to do it in order to learn how to do it. The same is true for teaching.”

The Beerstein quote of “you need to do it in order to learn how to do it” seems the best aligned, where mastery is both a practical skill set and a body of research: “teaching” could be substituted with “writing”.

Well said.

 

[MichaelGH]

Fine I’ll write what I know.

It was a dark and stormy night as Michael was forced back into his cage to write erotica for his captors...

 

[Hypoxia]

Most of what (I think) I know is non-erotic and/or more-or-less twisted and wrong. Thus I should not write that material except for lulz. Better to just make up stuff. True, writing what we know *can* be rewarding. EA Poe had exactly one book republished in his lifetime, a field guide to seashells. That's what he knew. What he made up didn't pay well.

 

[SynSlave]

Most of what (I think) I know is non-erotic and/or more-or-less twisted and wrong. Thus I should not write that material except for lulz. Better to just make up stuff. True, writing what we know *can* be rewarding. EA Poe had exactly one book republished in his lifetime, a field guide to seashells. That's what he knew. What he made up didn't pay well.

He had multiple publications. His first was a book of poems. Like many writers of his time, a lot of his published work was in newspapers, magazines or periodicals. His poverty had more to do with the fact that he was a whack-job that blew his inheritance and failed at every other venture in life with the exception of his writing. Military, marriage... being a raging alcoholic probably had something to do with it, or it was a byproduct of whatever legitimate psychological disorder(s) he had. Health diagnosis at the time were even worse than record keeping and treatment.

He was in fact, one of the few authors during his era that relied solely on his writing for income.

Huge Poe fan myself. His legacy came from his poems that he compiled after the death of his wife/cousin. Despair, darkness and pain was what he did know; and what he wrote about. I'd say he's a bad example for your point, but I get it. And bringing him up in any context is always worth the read and response in my book anyway.

 

[R. Richard]

I have some 345 published for pay books. If you write about an actual place, you need to have lived there. I wrote 'Anatomy of An Adult Film' with Sunset Thomas, a long time adult film star, so the book is real.

 

[Tabithablack]

Fake it until you make it would be a more modern verbiage.

 

[Erlikkhan]

I'm so blessed to have had all those multi-orgasmic sex orgies with beautiful women screaming with pleasure from my ten inch cock while gulping down gallons of cum or begging for me to splatter their faces and put it up their ass. Without these experiences I wouldn't know what to write.

 

[jehoram]

I wrote 'Anatomy of An Adult Film' with Sunset Thomas, a long time adult film star, so the book is real.

Which brings up another thing: if you don't have direct experience about something you want to bring across as authentic, it helps to have a beta reader who actually knows something about it to point out where you went wrong. My story "The Yearbook Girl" involved a photographer, and I'm not a photographer by any means. But I've hung out with enough of them to capture a little of the jargon, and I gave the story to a friend of mine to vet. He said that I hadn't made any glaring errors.

I wouldn't recommend that, if you're writing a horror story, you summon up a demon from the nether worlds to assist you in you quest for authenticity, but aside from that, it's not a bad idea to bounce your story off somebody who could save you from a howler of a mistake.

 

[KeithD]

I'm so blessed to have had all those multi-orgasmic sex orgies with beautiful women screaming with pleasure from my ten inch cock while gulping down gallons of cum or begging for me to splatter their faces and put it up their ass. Without these experiences I wouldn't know what to write.

Oh, were you at that party too?

 

[SimonDoom]

Oh, were you at that party too?

I'm still waiting for the invitation. That's why I'm writing these stories instead.

 

[KeithD]

I'm still waiting for the invitation. That's why I'm writing these stories instead.

Oh, I'm sure that you, like I have, have received invitations to private parties on the basis of the stories you have posted. Maybe not quite as many, as I don't think female readers are as likely to issue invitations as male readers are.

 

[oggbashan]

Live a lot. Do things that others wouldn't attempt. Take risks.

And remember!

 

[jehoram]

Do things that others wouldn't attempt.

Good plan. If they haven't done it, then they can't call you on the parts you got wrong.

 

[Hypoxia]

Fake it until you make it would be a more modern verbiage.

Quite so. I've not yet fornicated with talking manatees but I can pretend they're Disney characters and fake some choppy-surface fun.

 

[SynSlave]

Good plan. If they haven't done it, then they can't call you on the parts you got wrong.

Sound thinking. Think I'll write Hitler's Diary.

Psuedo-edit: Doh! Damn fox news...