Writing means allowing your readers to see things they sometimes can’t see. If only orphans wrote books about orphans, we’d never get anywhere. That would mean you’d never be able to write about a mother, a father, a dog, an airplane pilot, or the Russian Revolution unless you happened to be a mother, a father, a dog, an airplane pilot, or a witness to the Russian Revolution. You are only Marcus Goldman. And if every writer had to limit his writing to his own experiences, literature would be impoverished and would lose all its meaning. We’re allowed to write about anything that affects us. And
...more