Write about what you know, but best if it leads into what you don't know

Jnana Hodson

Jan 5

I've spent a lifetime writing – well, from my senior year in high school on.

I rather fell into a career as a newspaper journalist who worked mostly on the copy desk or a few steps beyond, with titles like news editor, lifestyles editor, makeup man (working closely with the production crew in what was called the back shop or, more politely, composing room).

My real dream was to have something more permanent as my legacy – books with my name on the cover and the spine. The fact was that as much as journalism engaged me, I yearned for a bigger picture than the daily deadlines usually reflected.

And so I spent much of my "free time" writing things that would never appear in a newspaper – poetry and fiction, especially, or even lengthy letters to friends and other writers. And, more recently, there's been the blogging, which I hope you've been following.

Many of those years I despaired that my "serious" work would never appear as printed books, especially once I discovered how much effort was required to land even one poem in a small-press literary journal.

The persistence has resulted in eight books of fiction to my credit plus more than a thousand published poems and a few chapbooks.

The most successful entry has been Quaking Dover, a history of one of the oldest Quaker congregations in the New World.

~*~

As my diamond jubilee year wraps up, I'm reflecting especially on those eight books of fiction and the life that's produced them.

You've heard the adage, of course, "Write about what you know." But I've come to see how important it is to also write about what you don't know, especially where it's at the edge of your existing knowledge. I am among those who write as an attempt to make sense of something personal, which means being something of an explorer or discoverer or laboratory technician. A good writer, I'm thinking, wears many hats, at least of the proverbial kind. Let me confess I rarely wear a hat of any kind, though I should, considering the balding and sunlight and many skin cancers.

Drafting a story is work, even on those rare and exhilarating flashes when it seems to write itself and you're flying too fast to worry about spelling or grammar or other details. But it's not the most difficult part of the practice.

Revisions, I should emphasize, are everything. Or at least the hardest part, and the more essential part of writing in the hope of a readership. I find that in hard revisions I discover more of what I'm coming to know.

With my focus on Quaking Dover for the past three years, I've neglected my earlier books. Returning to them this year feels like a good exercise, for you, dear reader, and for me.

One of the regular weekly features here will be on things behind my books. The stories themselves already speak on their own.

Please stay tuned and tune in.