Write What YOU Know

My husband told me the other day about one of the soldiers in his National Guard unit who has just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. The soldier told my husband that after one evening of watching the American news for the first time since being back home, he turned to his wife and asked, “What have you people done with my country?”

My husband asked me to write about that. I responded, “I can’t do that; it’s not my experience, it’s his. Tell your soldier friend to start his own blog and write his story.”

That’s what writing is all about – you have to write about what you know. Only you can tell your experience with your passion for the subject. Only you really know what it is or was like to go through what you lived.

Let me give you another example. My 21-year-old son was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus (known for short as Lupus SLE) when he was just 14 years old. What followed his diagnosis was five nightmare years of treatment, surgeries and too many nights in the emergency room or the hospital wondering if he would live to see the morning.

I can write about how it felt to be my teen son’s mother and caregiver. I can write about the toll that caregiving took on my body, my psyche, my soul. But, I cannot write about the experience from the perspective of the person whose body was being ravaged by this insidious and wicked disease. Only my son can write that story because that’s his story.

Both stories have value; both stories will help different groups of people. Both stories must be told.

That’s what I believe, very strongly: you must tell your story. If you don’t, no one else will. And if your story is not told, the world loses because your story happened so that you could share it and through its telling, help many others who need to read what it was like for you to live that story so they can make it through their own story with the faith, courage, and strength that they gain from reading what you wrote.

So go tell your story with all your passion and soul. The world is waiting.

Coach Sue