In a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog, Joshua Doležal says every writer should keep a list of topics on which we are an authority.
Everyone is an expert on something, he says. “That older gentleman with the baggy jeans and suspenders looks like a great handyman,” Doležal writes. “Maybe he is a veteran with firsthand memories of Vietnam. That college student in sweatpants—maybe they have 30,000 fans on a gaming platform, maybe they are already a whiz at e-commerce.”
This also applies to ourselves, though we may have a hard time believing that. But we can also write about topics without being an expert. “Time and again I find myself advising writers to lean into the mess,” Doležal says. “What story might you tell if you stopped trying to present yourself as a sage handing down wisdom from on high, but instead wrote bravely into the messes that you know so well?”
Doležal recommends starting a list of topics that we could teach someone about. His list includes parenting, songwriting, baseball, gardening, teaching, and wilderness conservation. “The more you add to your list, the more you’ll remember,” he writes. “Pretty soon you’ll agree with Flannery O’Connor that any of us who survives childhood has enough material to write for the rest of our lives.”
Those lists can lead to scenes. “The authority list works best when we keep breaking each topic down to single places and times,” Doležal explains. Once you identify an authority area, break it down into tasks that you must know well, then think back to when you used those skills. What was the scenario and who else was there? Did that moment change the trajectory of your life?
As you generate scenes, look for questions. “You’re not generating a list of topics to then write about,” Doležal adds. “You’re generating a list of containers for memories to write through. If you’re not curious about anything that shows up in your list, if you don’t feel some urgency to wrangle beauty and order out of the mess, then the result will be either flat or incomplete.”
It all begins with acknowledging your authority.
