Home » Write What You Know … or Don’t by Liz Flaherty

Write What You Know … or Don’t by Liz Flaherty

October 2, 2026 | By Women Writers Women Books | Reply More

As writers, we hear it from everyone—from other writers, from people who teach writing, from readers, and from people who are tired of hearing us groan and whine about writing. (Little do they know how much fun groaning and whining is if you’re sharing it with sympathetic listeners.)

Write what you know, they say. It’s in writing magazines, on blogs, and I have no doubt it sprinkles Substack liberally as well. It’s good advice—I’m not here to deny that. You’re much less likely to have a major screwup at the top of page 146 if you’re building your words about places, times, and events you know inside out. You won’t have McDonald’s on the opposite end of town from where it should be or the misspelled name of a street on a green sign in a town where all the street signs are black.

If you are a nurse, you’ll know what to call a blood pressure cuff or the squeezy oxygen thing that goes on your finger without having to look up words like sphygmomanometer or oximeter. Certain skills will ensure you know the difference between anxiety and depression, what kind of shoes you’ll wear when you’re working “on the floor,” and if you need to have acrylic fingernails removed before surgery.

If the place where you live checks its sirens at noon on the first Monday of every month, you’ll know not to do it every Friday at three o’clock. You’ll know if the fire department is volunteer or career or both.

I admit, I love reading a book where I can recognize the places on the pages and walk through a familiar neighborhood with the story’s main characters. As a retired postal worker, I’m always pleased when an author knows about the USPS’s quirks, rules (they have a million of them), and its history.

However, quite frankly, I’ve had what has been referred to as a small or limited life. I don’t consider it that—I love my life—but I haven’t traveled nearly as much as I wish I had. I haven’t met or come to know nearly enough people whose experiences vary a lot from mine. My post-high-school education was and continues to be of the life lessons variety.

I’ve already typed this paragraph at least three times, trying to get my keyboard to understand what I’m trying to say. While it is all well and good to suggest or insist that people write what they know, some of us don’t know enough. Even things I know well, like postal work, sewing, or my high school’s fight song, aren’t things that translate well over a writing career.

This is where the Don’t in this article’s title comes into play.

Cari Newland … make that Reverend Cari Newland … introduced herself in the first two books of the Harper Loch Trilogy, Pieces of Blue and Patches of Red. She was young, single, and fun. She was on the irreverent side for her chosen profession, although deeply devout at the same time. She worked in stained glass—about which I knew nothing, but she was just a secondary character, after all, who spent little time on the page. How much did I need to know about what she did when she wasn’t being Preach? That’s what the lake residents called her; I’m not sure how that happened—I’ve gone to church for a really long time and haven’t called a pastor Preach even once. Is that even a thing? Would it be allowed?

When Patches of Red was done, so was I. Two books from the lake were plenty. But there Cari was, making herself at home in the part of my brain where stories and their casts assemble. She was getting insistent, too. And there you go—just like that, she’s dancing at the reception of a wedding she’s officiated. With a Navy pilot, no less.

I know nothing about Navy pilots except that I saw the Blue Angels once and watched every episode of the TV show JAG a couple of times. Oh, and I’ve been to the National Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida. Does that count as something that I know?

Well, it probably doesn’t. Just as having known numerous female clergy doesn’t qualify me to presume to know the ins and outs of their lives.

While writing Cari and Zack’s story, I realized some things.

We all have to do research, even on things that we’ve known all our lives. I drove cars with a five-speed transmission for years, but still have to look up the arrangement of the gears on the shifter tree. I used to can vegetables, but I don’t remember everything about it; I have to look up the details. I milked cows as a kid, but the memory is tempered by time. Was it really that cold in the barn? Did Corey the Holstein really kick over that entire bucket of milk? (She did.) Which side did we sit on to milk and why? I know it mattered, but …

It did matter, but I don’t know why. What I do recall can take me back there and can also take a reader there. The warmth of the cow’s side when you leaned into her to milk. The sound of the stream hitting the pail. Squirting warm new milk into the mouths of the cats waiting anxiously for their share.

The devil, it is said, is in the details. Writers get dinged for details more often than they do about not being experts. In Shades of Green, I spoke of the clergy stole Cari wore for some ceremonies, but didn’t describe the vestment itself. I have members of the Amish is stories, but understand their communities differ too much for me to talk about the color of their buggies or the shape of the women’s kapps.

I’m never going to actually know what it’s like to be a pastor, female or otherwise, and the only faith I am an expert on is my own. I’m never going to know how a pilot feels when his plane lifts from the ground. Instead, I have to look it up.

Those are magic words in writing, aren’t they? Look it up. There’s another set of magic words that go with it, too. Feel it. Pull emotion up from wherever you keep it hidden and tuck it into the lines and spaces on the page.

It may not be easy. Sometimes you’ll have to go back and try again. I think a better term than Write what you know would be to Write what you learn. Then, when you’re doing that, don’t forget to include at least intermittent Write what you feel.

Oh, and stick with writing blood pressure cuff—sphygmomanometer is just way over the top. I hope you’ll get acquainted with Shades of Green and the lady preacher and the Navy pilot who danced at a wedding. I didn’t know them when I started, but I came to love them more with every page. I hope you do, too.

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Retired from the post office, Liz Flaherty spends non-writing time thinking about writing and wanting to travel. The author of 20-some books and her husband Duane share an old farmhouse in North Central Indiana. She thinks one of the things that keeps you young when you quite obviously aren’t anymore is the constant chances you have to reinvent yourself. Her latest professional incarnation is as a fledgling women’s fiction author and she is enjoying every minute that she’s not scared to death. She can be reached at lizkflaherty@gmail.com

Website: https://www.lizflaherty.net/

Shades of Green (Colors, the Harper Loch Trilogy Book 3)

Pastor Cari Newland’s life is stuck in the middle.

Her friends and parishioners at Harper Loch are mostly older than her thirty-three years… or they’re younger. While she likes being a single minister, she would also like to meet someone who sees her as someone besides “Preach.”
She gets hugged a lot, she realizes, but she never gets held. She’s never been the daughter her parents wanted or the woman her long-ago fiancé needed. Her life is good, but it’s lonely.

Enter handsome navy pilot Zack Grant. Visiting his parents at the lake, he attends a wedding Cari officiates. They talk and they dance and they are … interested. But Zack’s life is a thousand miles away and Cari’s life is firmly in Harper Loch. When interested begins to grow into something more, Cari and Zack must decide how to fit into each other’s world and whether or not they can make a long-distance romance work.

But Cari’s life is in the small lake community in Michigan. Zack’s is in the Florida Panhandle. And neither of them has any intention of changing locations.