Every writing professor I’ve ever had has urged me to write what I know. A writer writes from his personal experience, they said. They can only write about the things they know best.

If that were the case, I’d be screwed. My writing palate would be limited to Bravo TV shows and typical first-world “financial crises”. There isn’t a whole lot I claim to know; there aren’t too many life experiences I can boast of. No one close to me in my family has died, my parents haven’t divorced, and we can afford to feed ourselves three full meals a day. That limits me to dandy stories about that one time I chipped my nail and it hurt, or when I got that really expensive haircut and realized that it was no different than my $10 ‘do from Super Cuts. What a thrill.

Somehow, though, I’ve managed to write a thing or two that I am proud of. That play I wrote about a guy who sleeps with a horse got me an A in Playwriting I. That screenplay where the butch lesbian falls in love with a drag queen got me an A- in Crafts of Writing II. And that piece I did about a middle-aged housewife from New Jersey who gets a hysterectomy and finds herself imagining her life in Ancient Egypt as Cleopatra was produced off-off-Broadway.

I’ve never slept with a horse, I’m not a butch lesbian, nor did I fall in love with a drag queen, and I’m not a middle-aged housewife without ovaries. Maybe on the inside. So how can I write about something I don’t know? How can I call myself a writer if I focus my craft on this idea that, in no way can I claim to know a thing about?

Because of the reason we became artists in the first place. Imagination.

“Write about what you know” takes all the fun out of the craft of writing. It makes everything so real. So unimaginative. It makes art that reminds people that the world we live in is dreadfully dull. I’m over-generalizing, I know. But in my experience, it’s not too often that I walk down the street and something fanciful appears out of thin air. Maybe I’m just not looking hard enough.

We became artists because when we were young, our imagination was far more adventurous than we ever thought we ourselves could be. Our dreams led us into worlds that we couldn’t enter through 3rd grade math class. And our doodles were not only intensely entertaining, they were our mind’s eye manifesting itself in the silliness of disproportionate bodies and wacky faces.

Sometimes I think that was some of the best art we’ve ever created.

Were we writing about what we knew? No. Were we delving into the deepest and darkest depths of our ordinary childhood existence? Definitely not. We were doing what we liked. We drew the shapes our brain liked to see. We wrote that silly dialogue in our notebook because it was what our imagination wanted to read. And we concocted that entire play-world because it was what our soul wanted to believe.

As we grow older, we’re pigeon-holed into being “serious”. Into having that nine-to-five job that makes you exactly enough money to pay your rent and buy your groceries. You say Mister and Missus before every elder’s name and your please and thank-you is invaluable to your professional reputation. It becomes the dull reality of the world, and it becomes the sad subject of the artist’s imagination.

For [insert god]’s sake, don’t write about what you know. Write about what you like. Write about what you think. Write that crazy story about the booger-man you’re convinced lives inside your boss’ hairy nostril. Draw the way you think trees should look. Imagine the infinite possibilities of what our human existence could’ve been. And share it with the world. We want to see it. I want to see it. Make your day a little different. Make the world a little newer. Re-invent it.