Write What You Know and Know What You Write.

That is the most useless piece of advice anyone has ever given me: write what you know and know what you write.

In theory, that works. You write about things that you're familiar with and set stories in places you know of, and you should do fine.

But that's boring. Insanely boring. Life is fascinating, but, especially as a child writer, most people have been there, done that. Sure, my circumstances are very different to the majority of people - but heartbreak, crushes, teenage puppy love - most people know about it.

Besides, it's boring as a writer. I generally don't like recounts, because the ones worth reading are painful to write and the ones that are easy to write are completely sleepworthy. Writing is my escape into a world of passion and love and adventure that seems to be seemingly absent in the real world - at least in my world, anyway.

Take my latest project for example - I'm writing a romance story - a man and a woman fall in love, the calm before the tempest, the wave of calamity, then the fresh dewy morning after the storm - I'm trying to capture all of that. It's a beautiful bittersweet love story, like Pride & Prejudice and Romeo & Juliet mixed together set in modern-day Connecticut.

Okay, so I really don't have much idea what I'm talking about. I have fallen in love, many times, but that love has always been one way - I understand the obsession a woman can develop over a man, but I don't know what it's like to have that man return those feelings. What is it like, fighting with your significant other? What's it like, going through a rocky relationship? The only kinds of relationships I've had are non-existant.

I've never even been to Connecticut - or anywhere in the continental United States for that matter. I made up the town, but the climate, the beaches, the places that I can't make up - all have to be meticulously researched.

But it doesn't bother me. I can bury myself in the woes of non-existant characters - it sounds strange but it is quite soothing - because if things aren't going right in the real world then you can vent your feelings by causing a whirlwind of disaster in your imaginary world - I'm more powerful than all the Gods and Mother Nature in my imaginary world.

Research is ever so important - I can hardly say that Lily is best friends with a koala or that Edward's favourite food is Vegemite on toast. Of course, it would be a lot better and easier if I just went to darned Connecticut to see for myself - but I'm a poor high-school student, I can't exactly zoom around the world whenever I want. Plane tickets are expensive, you know, and the Australian dollar is not doing too well at the moment.

But you can't research love - if I went by the generic definitions given by dictionaries and encyclopedias you'd all fall asleep halfway through the book - and the dialogue would be cheesier than Hayden Christensen's lines as Anakin Skywalker in Attack of the Clones. But I can imagine love. In a way, it sort of doesn't matter that I've never had a proper boyfriend before, because every relationship is different, so even if I did go out with a couple of boys Lily and Edward would be different. Love must be good - I mean, it's what everyone dreams and thinks about, what millions of stories are based on. Love is more than our natural instinct to procreate - but it isn't too good, not the stuff described in fairytales, because life is never that good. Love makes us laugh and cry and smile and causes us pain and lets us heal. Sure the fact that I've never been asked out might take it's toll a little on my story, but I don't think it has a huge impact on the quality of my writing.

Everyone has an outlet to channel excess emotions - music, sport, passions, hobbies, art...mine is writing. My unappreciated love shouldn't go to waste - so instead of pining away (I do a little bit of it so I don't bottle it all up, but I don't rim my eyes with kohl, wear black and cut myself about it), I write about it.

So what you know is not necessarily what you're good at. I've never had any writing training in my life and I haven't got a clue whether or not I'm good, but I like it, and it makese me feel good, and I get lots of praise, so I like to think that I'm good at it. Without writing to draw all the pain and heartbreak out of my soul, I don't know where I'd be at.

Life isn't perfect, but even though the imaginary world seems better, it isn't real - except unles of course you're a weird soul like me and you visit a different world in you dreams, a new world, a better world.