Writing as an Outsider

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Writing outside my own experience has always been a daunting idea. There are so many things I'm interested in. I watch them through a window and they fascinate me. There's nothing wrong with observing, but writing is a different story. When writing, we are "pretending" to be someone else (in fiction, but one can argue that even in non-fiction, we might be trying to express a version of ourselves). We put ourselves in our characters' shoes and walk the journey as them. It doesn't matter if they're not the main character, we still have to be them.

And that's where problems arise.

I personally do not feel comfortable writing outside my own experiences because I know some things I wish to write about are topics that I have to tread carefully around for fear that I might offend someone from said community. I'm afraid of getting it wrong, afraid that my version of the experience as an outsider is not authentic or right, afraid of offending when I did not mean to. However, writing is a form of art and nobody really has the authority to be a gatekeeper.

I think that it is crucial to research as much as I can to understand the culture/belief/experience that I want to encapsulate. With the internet, I have access to thousands and thousands of sources. Moreover, I can reach out to these people who have experiences. I can talk to them and understand the topic even better. I believe that it's important to actually speak to someone before creating a character or an event that is inspired by that. It's not only about getting the right information down, it's also about respect. I'm essentially using someone else's "property", the least I could do is respect them by understanding and having someone from that community read my work. The best person to validate my information is, of course, someone who has experienced what I'm trying to write.

There are sensitive readers out there whose sole purpose is to read about these topics that we don't have first-hand experience in and help us filter through things that we wrote that are offensive or false information. The internet is a wonderful device when it comes to connected writers with people. We can learn so much from different people. I also think it's important to not limit ourselves to just one person/one source of information. In order to understand a topic well enough, we need to reach out to different sources because information are written by people and people have different perspectives. Everyone sees the world differently and that's exactly what makes the world so interesting.


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