By Sophie Novak:
Do you write from personal experience? Or you rather get lost in imaginary worlds and alternate realities, full of superheroes and alien creatures?
Our imaginations are endless and should be exploited creatively as much as possible. And yet, the number one writing advice says: ‘Write what you know’. Does this suggest that only war veterans can write about wars, or that Jules Verne really went around the world in 80 days?
Honestly, I used to hate this epic instruction. It somehow suggested that everything anyone writes is utterly personal and resembles the writer’s soul. Which simply isn’t true.
(Click on the image to read on)
Thomas Rydder 
Pingback: Write Now, Write Naked: 2013 365 Challenge #330 | writermummy
Interesting food for thought. I would say that maybe some element of personal experience flows through anything we write. Maybe what we write is some kind of metaphor of where our minds are at or what we are processing without conscious awareness of mulling anything over. Perhaps we are expressing something of a repressed feeling/thought/belief that comes out in fictional pieces we write. We could write that which has nothing to do with who we are or what we believe/feel/know, but in a sense, even that could reflect something about us. Maybe if we write of a fantasy world, it expresses a sense of emptiness/unhappiness or dissatisfaction of some kind with where we are in life so we use writing as a form of escapism into something more pleasant or exciting to explore?