I was born and raised in the Hudson Valley region of New York State, near New York City. I’ve understood the concept of hills and valleys and mountains all of my life, from my childhood excursions to the Catskills. In high school I was an earth science nerd and I’d read up on factoids about geography, mountains, and weather patterns (and let’s not talk about astronomy, because that’s another can of obsessive worms) because I thought it was fascinating. So in college, when several scenes in my draft needed to be set in a range of fictional mountains I’d created, I was fairly certain I knew what I was doing. I could write about things set in mountains, sure. I knew about mountains — a lot more than I knew about the physics of my magic, anyway. I wrote the scenes and I moved on.
That summer, I traveled to Munich, Germany to study German and I saw the Alps for the first time. I realized I knew nothing about the type of mountains I was trying to visualize because I’d had no frame of reference. I’d never seen mountains like these before. In Munich, you can see the Alps from within city limits — okay I couldn’t see them until I was standing on top of the Olympiaturm, the sight-seeing tower built in the Olympiapark, the park built for the 1984 Olympic Games — but the Alps are visible. From Munich. Later that month I took the train to Neuschwanstein Castle, in Füssen, Germany, in the Alps — well. I realized I’d had no frame of reference at all for what was a “mountain” and what was a “castle.”
(Though admittedly, Neuschwanstein is no where near the norm of a European castle. King Ludwig II bankrupted Bavaria to build it and only lived in it for 172 days. For reference, this castle was finished in 1884, the year after the Brooklyn Bridge was completed!)
The Alps themselves were even more stunning when I returned to Europe — dragging my then-fiancé (now husband) with me — the following spring, when there was still snow visible on the peaks.
The same year I dragged my then-fiancé to Europe, he dragged me to Utah to ski with him, and we’ve been going every spring since. We go to a mountain just outside the city limits of Salt Lake City, UT, less than an hour from SLC International Airport. Salt Lake City stands at an average of 4,300 ft above sea level (so less than mile-high Denver, CO), but on the drive up the canyon road to the mountain, the elevation increases from 4,500 to 8,000 feet at the lodge base. (In the car, driving up the winding road, gravity pulls you back into your seat because of the incline of the road.) The mountain itself has a peak of 11,000 ft. The peak is covered with some kind of snow sometimes as late as June. And the snow! I could write a whole entry about the multitude of different kinds of snow I’ve experienced there over the years. (“Blizzard” is a term we in New York City use for something the folks at this mountain would laugh at.)
What I wrote of mountains before I’d seen them, climbed them, skiied them was not factually incorrect. I’d gotten the basics correct; I had done my research. But when I rewrote the scenes, I found I wrote them with more confidence and authority. I was able to incorporate small details from my own experience, to give my characters the sense of unreality I’d felt being in such majestic surroundings. I think my writing benefited.
Thoreau said,
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
and every time I read that quote I think of the concept of “writing what you know” — one of the principles taught to writing students early on, one of those things we learn… then learn how to break. I know that as a writer of fantasy I will never have the opportunity to experience all that I’ll write about, either from the standpoint of a practical limitation or that of impossibility. Even more basically, I’ll never know what it is like to have grown up with a single parent. I may never know what it feels like to be a grandmother. I’ll never jump in lava (hopefully my characters won’t ever, either), I’ll never run someone through with my sword (I don’t even own a sword, unless you count my plastic lightsaber), and I’ll never fly through the eye of a hurricane (I wonder if Superman ever has?).
Instead, I’m doing my best to experience life, to live it to its fullest, so that when I sit down to write I can bring a wealth of emotions and memories to the computer with me, from which I can draw to create realistic, evocative fiction.
EDIT: I should probably edit to make clear that I’m not saying one should write only what one knows — or make up an entire novel’s contents without infusing it with one’s real experiences and emotions. There’s a happy medium. I’ve always hated the “write what you know” saying, because as someone who writes fantasy that always annoyed me. But it’s a solid point I shouldn’t entirely disregard. I think I’ve finally come around to understanding that using what I know to make my entirely imagined stuff feel more real is one way I can help my writing shine.
How have you used your life experiences in fiction? How have you compensated for a moment for which you had no personal frame of reference? Tell me what you think about “writing what you know”!
