Write What You Know, Or So They Say

Since school days, when my love for writing and reading started to mature under the tutelage of Mrs Hymers, I've been told to write what I know. Let's face it, though, you're not really that interested in a novel about an NHS programme manager.

Silly though it sounds, I've only recently attuned to what the phrase means. It's not referring to my profession or what I do, but rather it's about writing from a place of knowing. If you know Liverpool like the back of your hand, then write about it, but if you've never been there it's maybe better to concentrate a place that you do know.

However I realise there is something else about 'write what you know' and this place of knowing, and that's the role of research. It's ok for me to research something to the point where when I write about it, you think I have written about what I know.

Take the photograph at the top of this post. Flowers in a jug sitting on hessian. What do you know about flowers? A metal milk jug? Hessian?
 
Let's take flowers - we know that some have a delightful scent, that they come in different colours and start with a bud. Some flowers are as beautiful in their death as they are in their blossoming. Flowers can be bought at flower markets but you have to get there in the early hours before most others have stirred in their beds. In fact I know a little about the Liverpool flower market as I've been there to buy flowers and plants on a really cold spring morning before most people have stirred for the day ... and so we can go on.

But if you ask me about hessian, well, I don't really know anything about it, other than it's rough, always a beige brown and is used for sack cloth. It's something I can research. What other uses were made of hessian? What's it made from? How does it feel to be wrapped up in hessian? I know, having researched it, that people used to fill hessian sacks with straw or hay to create some semblance of a mattress to sleep on. It was scratchy, and attracted vermin and insects, and people would often wake up having been bitten by fleas and the like.

And the milk jug? Well, that transports me back to my Nana's kitchen in Woodlands. We'd get milk from the dairy farm next door, still warm from the cow. I don't remember the taste of it particularly, but I do recall that creamy, rich scent, almost earthy.

If you were looking at this photograph and writing what you know, what would it inspire you to write? What's your story?