I've kind of gone over this general concept, especially in my chapter "Boys and Girls" and maybe a little bit in my point of view chapter, but I'd like to expand on it here.
There's a pretty common piece of writing advice that I've heard a lot, and some of you have probably heard it at one point too if you've ever asked for writing advice. Hell, I may have even repeated it here in an earlier chapter and forgot about it, but here it is.
The advice is: Write what you know.
I'm not entirely sure where this advice first came from. When I first started writing, it made perfect sense to me. Writing, I thought, was a lot like acting. You get better with experience and as you grow older and experience more things in general, you're more equipped to be a writer. You can have the best vocabulary in the world, perfect grammar, and great technique in general. But if you have no idea what you're talking about, it shows.
For example, if you're writing a science fiction about outer space and for some reason think that gravity only exists on planet earth or that there mars is green, it will probably show in your story that you have no effing clue what you're saying. It's like when you're taking a test or writing an essay, and BS 95% of it, putting in lots of "howevers" and "therefores" to make it look more professional, even though you know you wrote it last minute while on a caffeine rush.
However (yes, I just said however), I think some people misunderstand the advice "write what you know," in that a lot of people take it to mean "write what you have experienced"
When you're trying to write about something you may not really know or understand, especially if it's a sensitive topic, you may come across as clueless at best, and insensitive at worst.
So how do you write about things you haven't experienced or maybe not even fully understand? There are plenty of actors out there, after all, who have played psychopaths and murderers, even though they themselves have never killed anyone (that I know of). And plenty of authors who have written books from the point of view of psychopaths.
There's a book I read a while ago called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is about a boy named Christopher who has a form of high functioning autism. The author, Mark Haddon, does not have autism, and also claims he is not an expert on autism in any way. How, then, could he have written a successful book from the point of view of a boy who has autism?
Well, part of writing what you know isn't always about specific experiences or things you've actually gone through, but about the emotions or feelings that surround the experience.
In other words, just because you haven't experienced something doesn't necessarily mean you don't know it. Also, just because you haven't experienced something in particular doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to understand it.
My newest story, A Rocket to Mars, is about a girl whose little sister has cancer which is terminal. Personally, I've never known anyone who had cancer or anyone who passed away from cancer. But I do understand loss and illness. I know what it's like to lose someone that's close to you. And that's something I could channel into my writing.
In an interview, Mark Haddon claimed that his book wasn't really about having autism, but about being an outsider, and seeing the world in a different way. An emotion all of us can relate to.
So how exactly could you channel your emotions into writing about things you haven't actually experienced?
Let's take an example. Say you're trying to write about an astronaut who gets lost in space.
I would hope that's something none of you have experienced. Although if you have I'd definitely like to hear about it.
You could imagine that someone who gets lost in space would probably be terrified, alone, despondent, etc. That's probably how you'd feel as well, unless you're just straight up ready to die.
Now think about that, and think about a time where you've felt sad, despondent, terrified, etc. Take that experience, that emotion, and use it.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with writing about things you've experienced if you've lived an interesting life. For example, if you've survived a knife attack by a crazed madman and would like to find a way to incorporate that into your story, by all means go ahead.
But to be honest here, my life isn't all that interesting, so if I were to only wrote about things I'd actually experienced, my stories wouldn't exactly be a thrill to read. Unless you like reading about late night trips to Taco Bell and panic-induced last minute essay writing.
However, as much as understanding the emotions behind an experience is an important part of it, there is another essential component.
Research.
Sometimes emotion alone isn't enough to carry the authenticity of a story. When it comes to administrative things, I try to put as much research as possible into what I write, because I really don't want to get something objectively wrong, or write about an event that's not actually possible in the real world.
When I started writing A Rocket to Mars there were a lot of things I had to look up, such as the specifics of the cancer my character has, things about New York City, since my characters went there and I've never actually been, etc. I asked my older brother, who's in med school, lots of things about leukemia and treatment for cancer as well, which helped a lot. Sometimes you never know where you'll end up finding good resources for research.
Without doing this, I may nail the emotional aspect of the story, but still weaken it by including something that's just plain wrong, or medically inaccurate. I'm sure Mark Haddon did his own research when it came to writing a story about a child with autism.
To conclude, while I don't think the advice "write what you know" is necessarily bad advice, I think it shouldn't be used to limit what you write about to the narrow frame of what you have experienced or truly understand. Don't let it hinder you from branching out and writing about the things you really want to.