I write what I don’t know

“Write what you know” is a maxim preached to aspiring writers.

I get emails from single fathers who tell me that The Book of Man captured their experience. I have no children. I get emails from people who’ve been hospitalized for depression saying the same thing about the same book. I have never been depressed and have never been hospitalized.

I have also never been a young Dutch woman, nor a Mexican-American drug-dealer and murderer, nor a murderous pedophile, nor a female ex-cop from an upper...