How do you write about what you know?

It’s a common enough saying. “Write what you know.” In fact, I think I’ve heard it ad nauseum, in that I never necessarily agreed with it. I mean, I like to tell fantastical weird stories. I can’t say I’ve ever met a man like the Digger of the Wastes, who appears in Bridge Burner Hyperion as a man with narcissus flowers for hair and the job of killing the old stories beneath the ground before they wake up. Nor would I want to meet a man like that, quite frankly.

However, I think there is a kernel of truth to writing about what you know. For instance, I love music. It’s in my blood. I’ve played in more bands than I can remember, and only feel the most sane when I have a guitar I can pick up at a moment’s notice. My love of music has found its way into my writing through characters who are either musicians themselves or have to use music as a means of understanding the worlds they inhabit.

Thurmond, from Bridge Burner Hyperion, uses a bass-saber as both a weapon and an instrument. This was an idea I came up with after I had started learning how to play bass when I was sixteen years old, part bass, part axe. I don’t think I would have ever been able to think this up if I hadn’t been learning the intricacies of the bass guitar. The idea came from something I knew, but wasn’t just a literal interpretation of my knowledge. I reshaped it, dissolved my knowledge in my creative juices and made it something wholly original. And as artists, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?