M.B NOVELS®

Every writer eventually receives some variation of the same advice: write what you know.

What nobody tells you is that sometimes what you know is grief. Or heartbreak. Or loneliness. Or anger. Or a very specific humiliation that happened six years ago and still manages to wake you up at 2 am. Unfortunately, those are often the things that make the best material because when something gets under your skin and refuses to leave, it usually has something worth exploring. The emotions we spend the most time avoiding tend to be the ones with the most to say.

This is where many writers get stuck. They want to write honestly, but not that honestly. They want the emotional depth without the emotional exposure. They want readers to feel something profound without having to reveal the parts of themselves that produced it.

I understand the impulse. Vulnerability is uncomfortable. Writing about something that genuinely matters to you feels significantly riskier than writing about something you don’t care about. If a scene falls flat, that’s one thing. If a scene built from your real fears falls flat, suddenly it feels personal. Readers may not know exactly why one scene resonates and another doesn’t, but they can sense when a writer is protecting themselves. They can feel when a paragraph is technically competent but emotionally distant. They can tell when you’re circling the truth instead of walking directly into it.

That doesn’t mean every draft should become a public diary entry. Despite what social media occasionally suggests, not every emotion needs immediate publication. Some things are still yours. Some experiences need time before they become stories. Some wounds are better handled in private than on a page intended for strangers. (I should probably listen to my own advice.)

In fact, some of the most personal things I’ve ever written are hidden behind fictional characters, invented conversations, and situations that never happened. The facts changed. The emotions didn’t. Fiction gives us enough distance to tell the truth more clearly.

And if you’re currently going through something difficult, here’s the encouragement portion of this article: you do not have to wait until you’ve completely figured it out before writing about it. We might fall into the trap of assuming we need closure before creating anything meaningful. Respectfully, that sounds exhausting. You don’t need answers to begin.

You just need curiosity.

Now for the brutal honesty. Pain alone is not a writing strategy. You still have to do the work. Feeling deeply is not the same thing as writing well. The draft where you cried while writing it may still need structural edits. I know. Tragic. But that doesn’t make the emotion less valuable. It just means art requires both vulnerability and craftsmanship.

So if you’re going through it right now — whatever “it” happens to be — write anyway. Write the messy version. Write the angry version. Write the confused version. Write the paragraph that feels a little too honest. You can always revise it later. You can always make it prettier. You can always decide what stays and what goes. The important thing is getting close enough to the truth that the page starts feeling alive. Terrifyingly close to the thing you were trying not to write about.