Boredom and Xenophilia

About a month ago I wrote some different from my usual flights of speculative fancy: a slice-of-life exercise describing my walk from the metro station. People really liked it. Or, rather, lots of people who know me commented on it, which isn’t quite the same thing. Most people in my social circle aren’t spec-fic fans and don’t have much to say about my usual writing, and most of the people who read my stuff who are spec-fic fans don’t know me and are unlikely to comment. But even accounting for that selection bias, let’s say people like my writing more when it’s closer to home.

It makes sense. When I write about things in my daily life, I don’t need to expend energy on worldbuilding. I can focus on description of scene, secure in the knowledge that my readers’ xenophilia will be tickled by Sofia, itself. Most of my anglophone readers have never been to Sofia and are curious about it. They’d probably also be curious about my experiences growing up in a college dorm, moving cross-country three times, teaching ESL in Japan, Boston, and Sofia, living in the Balkan Tower of Matriarchy, raising a bilingual child…why don’t I write about any of that stuff?

Because I’m a xenophile, too. My love for the strange and foreign is what made me a fan of science fiction and fantasy in the first place, and everything I’ve experienced is normal to me. I do add autobiographical details to the story, but the writing process isn’t fun unless I’m learning about something foreign to my experience.

Of course I’m not only in this job for fun, and I have a sneaking suspicion that real experiences sell. Write what you know and all that. So the challenge of my next project will be how to balance the stuff that’s weird (and therefor fun) to me with the stuff that is only weird to you. How should I go about that?