Writing What You Don't Know

On Novalis’ Aphorisms and Fragments
"Whoever describes nothing but his own experiences, his favorite objects, and cannot bring himself patiently to examine and depict even a totally unknown and uninteresting object will never achieve anything preeminent as an artist. The artist must be able and willing to describe everything."
German Romantic Criticism, p. 64.

I do not agree with Novalis’s statement about the subjective artist’s inability to achieve preeminence; I don’t know if Emily Dickinson ever wrote of anything outside of her experience. I highlight the statement, however, because it describes what I consider to be a matter of maturity for writers. Most amateur or young writers will write from personal experience. One of the most common precepts to writers is “Write what you know.” At some point, in the course of maturity, the writer must consider writing beyond his experience. (Unless he happens to live like Hemingway.) My own lesson on this came about, in part, by reading T.S. Eliot’s essays, and his “objective correlative” stuck with me ever since.

It is difficult to achieve, I think. When I consider my own poetry, the poems that are written of personal experience strike me as complete. Personal experience gives me a standard by which to judge if the poem is effective. I want to convey the emotion of that event, the significance of that event I am able to judge if the poem has the right proportions to convey that. Have I used the right language? Have I given too much detail? Have I the right distance from the event? Personal experience also helps me decide when the poem is finished, not unlike resolving problems in life.

When I write of events I have not experienced it is difficult to answer all of these questions. I wrote “Vulcan’s Tattoo Shop” without experience of tattoo shops or cancer. I still wonder if it’s right. The portion that describes the tattoo artist’s perspective I think is right, because tattoos went from personal strong statements to popular sayings applied like the Crackerjack stick-ons. That is observable enough from social trends. But I don’t know if the woman with cancer getting a tattoo of a pink ribbon has enough impact. I think my poetry tends towards resignation or stoic resolve because that is how I live. It would be farther outside myself to write on something like requited love.

This recognition reveals that nothing I write will be “totally unknown.” There is, at the core, the emotions I have experienced.