by C.V.Rajan

Created on: May 03, 2009   Last Updated: May 23, 2009

"Preach what you practice". The message conveyed through this proverb is that one's actions and words are to be in tune with one's true nature. This message can very well fit into what you write too. When what you write contains what you have experienced or what you know for sure through your experience, it has a larger content of truth. Truth shines brightly when presented honestly.

Creative writing involves expression of experience as well as imagination. A creative writing in the form of a fiction which is totally based on imagination without a dab of reality is most unlikely to cut ice with the readers. In fact, when lots of people read a piece of creative writing and feel deeply absorbed in the story-line or characterization, it is an indication that the author has been extremely successful in mixing imagination with real life experience and characters.

Writing what you know as part of creative writing need not necessarily be autobiographical. "What you know" can involve many things: what you have personally experienced, what you have personally observed in people's lives around you, what you have emotionally and intellectually analyzed (and even extrapolated) in the happenings in your life as well as in others around you.

The prerequisites of molding what you know into a good and interesting piece of creative writing are (a) a sharp memory to register the happenings in all earnestness (b) a keen eye to notice finer details - facial expressions of people, body language, a vivid picture of the time, place and surroundings and (c) the capacity to analyze the happenings subsequently by standing aside and re-enacting all that happened as though you are a by-stander, a witness, a third person, even though you could be among the first to third person during the actual incidence.

Next comes the actual stage of writing what you know in the form of a creative writing. If it is a poetry, the best bet is to cast aside your intellectual analysis of the happening and concentrate predominantly on the emotional aspect of it. Even if you were only the third person in the experience, put yourself in the shoes of the first person and write from the emotional angle of that person.

If your piece of writing is fiction, then what you write based on what you know should encompass everything - the emotional, the intellectual, the subjective, the objective, the interpretation and extrapolation, the finer details of the scenario and a fair doze of imagination added in the right measure.

At your early attempts in creative writing, you may not succeed in putting all these eggs efficiently in one basket. But your personal experience definitely enhances the quality and conviction behind your writing because of the simple fact that it is not a totally concocted fiction. You will grow by experience. As you write more and more based on what you know, you will be surprised to find your own capacity of expressiveness improving day by day.

As you mature into an accomplished writer, you will find the capability of your writing skills, cultivated carefully all along by banking on what you know, enhancing to much higher level, where even a highly imaginative piece of your writing will appear to be a true life experience!

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