How to Outgrow "Write What You Know"

Posted by Wayne G. Barber

Every writer has heard it time and again, and it's not without merit: "Write what you know."

When I began freelancing, I was just out of the main stream work place, so what did I write about? Everyday Working. I wrote profiles of fellow entrepreneurs, I wrote editorials about small business life... and after a while, I really wanted to move on and write about other things. But I didn't feel qualified. Luckily, I didn't let that hold me back for too long. "Write what you know" is a very good starting point. But that's all it is. It's a place for you to go to get your feet wet, and a place to come back to when the tide gets too high. But it's not a place to stay for very long. A better piece of advice, in my opinion, is "Write what you want to know." One of the great perks of being a freelance writer is that you could possible get paid to learn about things. So... what do you want to learn about? If I had completely disregarded "Write what you know" and simply opened a page of the www.waynebarbersauthorshour.blogspot.com  at random, figuring I'd send a query to whichever market my finger happened to touch, my career would be very different today. I might have ended up writing about brain surgery, tarpon fishing, and rugby. And you know what? I would have hated it. I have no experience with any of the above topics, and there's a good reason for that: I never really wanted to have experience with them. Since I have no real passion for any of the topics, if I had to write articles about them, it would feel like work. But did you ever stop to think about the things you always wanted to know, but never found out? Or all the interesting people you wanted to meet? Or the problems you've encountered that you wanted solved?
  Explore your brain for any idea and you too will be amazed at what you can write about and develop your skills to take your writing craft to a different level and really bring out your 5 year old creative juices in fun stories.