Writers write from empathy (004)

I finally got this podcast edited and uploaded for you! I don't know why each episode seems so monumental to me but they do, and I always have a minor celebration everytime I get one done. *chair dancing*

The working title for this episode was “you don't need to be it to write it” which sums it up generally, but misses a lot of nuance (as generalizations often do). In it, I take on the old saw “write what you know!” and it’s a heck of a battle!

There is a reason that this saying is brought out and used to slap around every next generation of writers. I talk about the value of this idea in this podcast, with a little bit of wisdom courtesy of poet nikki Giovanni who has excellent insight into the writer’s experience. Launching off of a quote she made about writing, wherein she says writers write from empathy, I discuss the true value of our imagination as well as the importance of compassion and empathy to our creativity. 

This is an important lesson I have to relearn regularly myself, even having been published in many different ways over many different years. We can swamp ourselves with our insecurities and our fears, and that is as true today for me when I was first learning to treat my art seriously. 

This year has been a watershed for me personally in that I've made some major breakthroughs in therapy and in my personal relationships that directly affect my goal and as an entrepreneur. I've always wanted to be my own boss, to greater or lesser degrees, and I've always wanted to help other writers and other creative people manifest their goals in their art. I have often served as a cheerleader for writers, mostly my friends in the fanfiction community, but not until this year was I able to take the step to start this business, the author Alchemist, in order to support both writers and myself! 

What does that have to do with “write what you know”? It's the idea that we know more than we think we do, and we don't give ourselves credit for knowing those things.

Writers don’t write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don’t. …If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy. - Nikki Giovanni

Resources: 

Nikki Giovanni on Wikipedia