Fiction is a Process of Imagination, Not Real Life.

All writers hear the phrase, “write what you know” throughout their career. Whether from editors or friends or creative writing teachers, it seems to fly in the face of “fiction.” Perhaps this phrase was born out of the literary fiction movement in which literature is meant to reflect the human condition (highly imaginative fiction, such as sci-fi or fantasy, often gets left out of this classification although one could argue that authors like LeGuin write “literary science fiction”).

The Atla...