the worst advice?

"write what you know!"

um. no.

I know nothing about falling in love with a literary character and then falling into a portal that leads to wonderland and I know nothing about fated mates who cross worlds to be together. And oh yeah, I also know nothing about magic or being a serial killer. In fact, I'm pretty boring.

In fact the only aspect of my writing that this advice is even remotely helpful is when writing race. Because I am white. And all my main characters are white. I do my best to add secondary characters of color, but I don't know what it's like to be brown or black or tan. So I don't try to write those experiences. (don't come at me if I write blue people or green people, etc)

I did twice. (before i knew better) One of those books has already been taken down and will get heavy rewrites, the other story I asked a bunch of authors I knew at the time (white and otherwise) and they told me to go ahead, so it's at Scribd right now. When I get the rights back, I may never re-release it or I may give it heavy edits as well, I'm not sure yet. What I know is I didn't mean harm but probably made some anyway. I'm learning.

So yeah, I write things I don't know all the time. But not this. Not again.

(also I get a kick out of imagining some literary snob going to Tolkien, "Um, sir, you've never actually met a Hobbit as they do not exist, maybe you should not write about them.")