I recently watched a clip from The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers talking about inspiration and practice and making music.
“The old cliche of write what you know about. It took me twenty years to write what I know about on this record. It’s not as easy as it sounds.”
You could watch the full clip, which is understated and magnetic at the same time.
As I delight in reading fiction and thinking about the craft of it, I’ve been circling this question of writing from a place of experience and knowing.
Some say start by writing what you know, that you have to write from that authentic voice. Other toss the whole concept out the window. They say that as a fiction writer, A Creator of Worlds, you aren’t bound to any constrains or limits.
So here’s a slice of fiction from me. It’s a both a bit of knowing and not knowing. I use one to circle and access the other, moving in and out, a mix of experience and invention.
What I Know
I know the musty smell of unwashed bodies. They are all salt and shame and bitterness. I know the sweat the beads and slimes down my unwashed back. I know the ache of overburdened feet. I know bones that need eternal rest.
I know the thrill of a spark of sun, fleeting, sneaking around the guard towers, glistening off machine guns, twisting through rivers of razor wire.
I know my ankles rubbed raw from chains. I know the putrid smell of the cellblock. I know blood and hopelessness.
I know the silence of the noontime swelter. Too hot to fight, to threaten, to rage. Too hot to yearn. For peace. For justice.
I know burning for vengeance, burning for freedom, burning with regret.
I know burning.
They came for us as we slept. Our bedroom was suddenly illuminated by a cruciform torch, a burning cross raised up on the lawn, our judge and jury and executioner. Tears of flaming tar dripped down and seared the yard and then the house.
I crawled along the floor, blind and deaf and dumb with terror, no sound but purifying fire, the baby’s cries silenced by smoke, my beloved crushed beneath a burning bookcase.
I know their eyes as I stumbled out and raced at them. Peeking out from pointed hoods. A banker. A farmer. A schoolteacher. A democratizing brotherhood of hate. Leering, taunting, gleaming. Drunk with violence.
I know boots into my ribs and I know fists into my neck as I fought for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Later, when one of them rapped his gavel and called it assault and intent and let me off easy with twenty years, I knew the crush of regret, the smile of hate, and the death of hope.