On her website (http://home.cshore.com/gailgauthier/tw-writing.htm), Gail Gauthier tries to show teachers how they can demonstrate the meaning of ‘writing what you know’, and tap into the creative potential of students.

Gauthier explains that writing what you know means using your experiences – both events you have experiences, and lessons you have learned about life – as a starting point for creative writing.  She suggests keeping a timeline of events experienced by a class, to be used as a source of ideas around which to centre writing activities. 
Gauthier also includes a couple of examples of themes on which to write, such as “My Life Among the Aliens.”  What Gauthier advocates is combining story ideas such as “Aliens” with events from the timeline, to help students discover how their own experiences can help writing come alive.

Gauthier’s ideas seem very useful for any creative writing teacher.  They can help in showing students how to tap into real and meaningful experiences from their own lives, and to communicate the important aspects of those experiences to others in an interesting and meaningful way.  They can help students to hone their descriptive
abilities, and show them how to create a sense of familiarity by how they establish the setting of a story.  They also provide an opportunity for teachers and students to more effectively explore different themes about life, and to explore different genres of writing, and their uses.

Among Gauthier’s other ideas is collecting a series of short stories using the same concept (such as the “Aliens” idea), but different events from the class timeline.  This can have benefits for a creative writing class.  Beyond the sense of accomplishment for students who compile their work into a larger volume, it allows the class to explore the dynamics of characters – how they change over time, why they change, and what effect the events people experience every day can have on their lives.

As a starting point for a creative writing course, Gauthier’s ideas are well worth exploring.  They provide effective strategies for helping students not just to write what they know, but to understand the meaning and usefulness of this concept.  Using Gauthier’s strategies may mean a little more preparatory work for teachers, but they can help to give students a sense of accomplishment, as well as to better understand how to communicate ideas through creative writing, and how to understand the ideas they encounter in the work of other writers.