Write About Something You Know…
It’s one of the tips most often given to
budding authors. After all, it seems obvious, doesn’t it? If you love horses,
write a book involving horses, if football’s your passion, write a book with
football in it. But when I think back to the first books I got published, not
one of them involved a subject I knew much about. They were all animal books
and although I know a fair bit about dogs and horses, I actually found myself
writing books about cats, chinchillas, rats and goats. This theme of writing
about subjects I know very little about has continued over the years. I’ve
written a series about ice-skating, a series about ballet, a series about
travelling the world and rescuing endangered animals and, most recently, a
series about baking. None of which were things that I knew very much about when
I started writing them.
You see, if an editor says to me ‘I’d like
a book about…’ (fill in the gap with whatever activity/animal you want) I will undoubtedly
find myself saying ‘no problem, I can do that!’ and then usually adding for
good measure: ‘oh yes, I used to do it all the time when I was a child.’ The
thing is, in my head I can bake and
ice skate and ballet dance. I can certainly imagine what it’s like to love
those things and to feel passionately about them and I do lots of research to
fill in the gaps and details. Research is brilliant fun – often far more fun
than writing –the Internet is a wonderful tool. You want to know what it’s like
to go to study polar bears in a remote settlement in Svalbard, Norway then you
can bet that someone, somewhere will have blogged about it and provided photos.
You want to know what the airport in Delhi looks like, well you can watch many YouTube
videos of people walking through Delhi airport. You want to know the
traditional way to make pumpernickel, then you can find photos and recipes
galore. I thank heavens for those people who take photos and videos wherever
they go and of whatever they are doing because I really do rely on them. I also
rely on talking to people who are experts in their field. Reading, watching,
talking to people who can actually do the things I am writing about and getting
my own hands on experience if at all possible helps me no end - sadly not possible
when it came to the polar bears in Svalbard but I did end up baking a lot of
cakes and pastries when I was writing my Best Friends Bakery series. The more I
baked, the more I came to understand why so many people love to bake so much - even
if my own attempts still in no way measure up to the fantasy cakes I am able to
bake in my head!
So, if you or someone you know would like
to write, yes, writing about something you know a lot about
is clearly good, sound advice but you might also have an incredible time if you
write about something outside of your comfort zone, something completely new –
you need to do the research but it will open your mind, broaden your horizons
and most of all, be a huge amount of fun!
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