write what you know -

Earnest Hemingway when asked for advice on writing is reported to have said: Write what you know.

Around the turn of the century, I got to visit the museum at his childhood home in Oak Park, Illinois and the museum at his home in Key West, Florida where he lived for some time as an adult. If I remember correctly, when he began a new work, his first sentence was something he knew, and that was his starting point. He wrote on from that truth.

During my years of writing, I’ve followed Hemingway’s advice at times when I’m stuck. Even on days when it seems I don’t know anything at all, I can always write: It seems I don’t know anything at all.

Everything seems in flux today, and what I know seems propped up on a spindly table. It topples easily. I could be successful as a tree, perhaps. A tree soaks up sun and rain. It knows the wind through the fluttering of its leaves, and the happiness of squirrels and birds perched on its limbs. A tree just lives, and I suspect does not worry about reality and deception.

Or I could write: I drove a little gray car a couple hundred miles on this mild and breezy day.