Going to New York

One of my writer friends uses the phrase "going to New York" as a kind of shorthand to herself, to remind her that writing has to go all the way. It's not enough to hypothesize about New York or view it from a polite distance. You've got to go there, to the place in yourself that intimidates you, that's big and unruly and dirty and magical. The scariest, realest place you've got.

It's a good metaphor, although I modify it for my own use. In my personal mythology, that city-to-end-all-cities...