Write What You (Don't) Know

One thing I admire about Poets & Writers (my favorite magazine, by far) is how it routinely introduces me to writers I wasn’t previously familiar with and, more importantly, making me really care about those writers. The most recent example is Colum McCann, the subject of a nice profile (story not online) in the current issue. Here's a particularly insightful quote from McCann:

So many people believe that you should only write what you know. But I’m interested in writing toward what you want to know…Yes. It’s an absurd prospect. It is impossible -- philosophically and logically -- because ultimately we only write about ourselves anyway. However, I want my students to leave the shackles of their immediate geography, their suburban upbringing -- the mother who is still haunting them and taking their fiction down. I want them to lose all that. Invent your mother, invent a new father. Ultimately, they will carve it down to what they really can do. But it’s a question of liberation.

McCann practices what he preaches, going down into New York’s subway tunnels “four or five times a week” in researching the urban homeless for his novel This Side of Brightness, and spending extensive time in Roma (Gypsy) camps in Eastern Europe for his latest, Zoli.

I admire his enthusiasm for sociological immersion, partly due to my recent realization that something similar may be required of me with my novel-in-progress, Forever, of which I’m very close to completing my first draft. In writing the novel, I’ve willfully steered clear of my usual literary stomping grounds of Chicago and the Midwest, with the plot taking place in South Africa, New York City, Philadelphia and Atlanta. By necessity (both logistical and economic), I’ll probably have to forego visiting the diamond mines of South Africa, and the New York and Atlanta sections are largely interior, so no visit to those cities will likely be necessary. There’s also been plenty enough written about New York that I can probably glean any physical insights I need from books -- just for starters, I’m already considering re-reading Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer, and reading The Great Gatsby and Thomas Kelly’s Empire Rising for the first time, with each of these novels taking place at roughly the same time as the New York section of my book.

Which leaves Philadelphia, a city I know little of, and in fact have never even visited. The Philadelphia section of the book has a very strong physical element to it, with its descriptions based entirely on naïve presumption and conjecture on my part. I already know that subsequent revisions will result in my completely tearing apart and correcting the exterior passages (I’ve even been making up all the street names) for accuracy. This will undoubtedly require one or more visits to the city, preferably under the guidance of a patient and knowledgeable native. Any native Philadelphians, whether resident or expatriate, who might be bravely willing to undertake such an adventure may feel free to contact me.