Channeling What I Know Into Badass Fiction

The old writing adage goes:

               "Write what you know."

To the fantasy writer, this statement seems laughable. It was to me for many years. Especially since I powered through so many of my novels, start to finish, not knowing what-the-hell inspired these worlds, these characters, these plots. After completing several fantasy novels of varying size and subject, a couple people in my life who'd never before questioned my devotion to the genre suggested I write something a little more... real.

Thus I spent four years plugging away at my very first contemporary manuscript. Initially the task was both daunting and terrifying, a bit like Harry Potter suddenly waking a Muggle--ALL the magic was gone. My characters could no longer just whip out a wand or break the world in half to solve their problems. There was no dying and coming back to life. The availability of actual tension shrunk considerably to the point where I knew rather quickly there was no resorting to artificial tension as I had in years past.

Four years later. The manuscript still reeks of poor sentence structure and a weak story but one thing remains: tension.

What does any of this have to do with "write what you know"?

During the process of constructing (or failing to construct) my singular contemporary novel I learned to hijack every personal memory from my young life, blend it with another memory or plain twist it to fit my characters and their circumstances. Despite failing to finalize a satisfactory draft (there were four full drafts; none of them will EVER see publication, just not good enough yet) that contemporary manuscript taught me a most valuable lesson. How to use "what I know" to tell a story.

Currently I am drafting a big fat fantasy novel, the kind of story I've wanted to read since high school, the kind of story I've been trying to write since high school. Just while writing the outline I've accessed "what I know" all over the place:

1) The Rise of Genghis Khan
2) The purpose and power behind the portal-quest fantasy
3) The Queen of Sheba
4) The Fall of Lucifer (Biblical Account)
5) African Deities (Stolen from Several African Cultures)

Et cetera.

Because the more I learn, the more I'm capable of writing. Because, really, we all write "what I know" in one form or another.