There’s an old saying, “Write What You Know.” But author Ken Kesey, who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, said it best: “Write about what you don’t know about what you know.” In other words, explore past the edges of what is comfortable and familiar, and get to know something new and unexpected.
I’ve been thinking about how I do and do not write what I know. In my novel in progress, Shadow Gardens, I started off writing a satire, a sort of Indian origin light and funny Mrs. Dalloway. My book, at that time, was tentatively titled, “Mrs. Lahiri’s Victory Garden,” and was partially a nod toward Virginia Woolf and the writing of Jamaica Kincaid.
What surprised me, three years later, is that my protagonist Mrs. Lahiri had a deep dark secret and a colorful past, two things I hadn’t even thought of for her, when I first started writing this book during the 2008 NaNoWriMo.
Yet it’s Mrs. Lahiri’s past and secrets that are the most vivid moments in the novel. What are the stories you hold dear, and what about them do you need to explore further?
Devi Laskar is a founding member of the Book Writing World. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, is a rabid Tar Heel basketball fan and has three poems coming out in the next issue of The Tule Review (February 2012).