Write what you know or know what you write?

My name is Steven and I’m a failed writer.

When I was in college I was always told by writing teachers to, “Write what you know.” I was young and didn’t find such advice daunting as I pretty much knew everything until I was around 35 years old at which time I became an intellectual variation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Benjamin Button; knowing less and less about more and more until it seemed I knew nothing about everything. If I were to write what I am certain of at this point in my life, there would be a lot of fiction about my bowels. Some would argue that my fiction when I was young originated in the same place so there you are: Circle of Life.

I once took a class from Roger Welsch, the renowned folklorist, who advised his students to not sell themselves short on what they know. He recalled a previous student, flummoxed by her inability to write something grand and ageless even though she was still a teenager, the grandest experience of her life to that point involving Junior Prom. Dr. Welsch gave her an assignment: Think of something involving your family that you found interesting. The girl came back with the following tale: Her grandmother and grandfather lived in a small Nebraska town where everyone knew each other. It was in a time when people talked over the back fence and hung their wash on a clothesline. Every week the girl’s grandmother washed her husband’s pajamas and hung them on the line. When they were dry, she neatly folded them and placed the PJs in a dresser drawer where they remained until the next week when she removed the clean, unworn pajamas, rewashed them, and again hung them on the line. Why did she do this?

“Well,” the girl told Dr. Welsch, “my grandpa slept in the nude and my grandma didn’t want anyone to know. So she kept washing his clean pajamas and hanging them up for the neighbors to see.”

“It’s hard to make up stuff that good,” Dr. Welsch told his student.

So . . . can you only write about what you have experienced? Not necessarily. Frank Herbert created the world of Dune, J.R.R. Tolkien the inhabitants of Middle-Earth, J.K. Rowling the wizard’s school at Hogwarts. When I was a teenager, I loved books by Alastair MacClean, the Scottish schoolteacher who wrote The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, and Where Eagles Dare. MacClean served in the British Navy during World War II, but his tales of mountain-climbing commandos, nuclear submarines, and double agents were concocted without the benefit of actual experiences. He learned about these things in the library, not by scaling Matterhorn or splitting an atom. He didn’t write what he knew; he knew what he wrote.

The other day I picked up my wife from an appointment across town. When I pulled up to the curb, she was waiting alongside a very old man.

         “This is Zane,” she told me. “We’re giving him a ride.”

         It turned out that Zane was 90 years old and had asked my wife for help in finding the right bus. As is her nature, she immediately created the Mayfield Bus Company and announced the departure time for the Marina route to be at exactly that moment. Zane got in the car and introduced himself. “Thank you for your kindness,” he said. “In exchange, you will get a really good story.”

It turned out that Zane had been born and raised in San Francisco, the son of a Scotch-Irish mother and Japanese father. His father was Issei; born in Japan. Zane had gone to high school in the city, graduating in 1942 just a few months following the attack on Pearl Harbor. World War II had begun, and not long thereafter, Zane and his parents were shipped off to an assembly area for Japanese-Americans where they lived in captivity for a few months before being sent to a War Relocation Center in Utah. He spent a year there before being allowed to enlist in the Army.

There was more and it was a really good story. However, what most intrigued me was that I had just finished writing a book about a young Japanese-American teenager who is sent to a War Relocation Center during World War II, eventually escaping by joining the Army. I had spent a lot of time on research, finding it fairly easy to get information about the timeline and physical settings. However, the feelings of a young man spurned by his countrymen are not found in the stacks of a library and I was interested to see if I’d gotten it right. Unfortunately, we arrived at Zane’s home before I could ask all my questions. Besides, he had moved on to other topics by then. “I moved to New York City after the war,” he told us. “I lived there for twenty-six years. I was a dance instructor.” He offered to give Pam and I free lessons. He said the rumba is easiest and we’d start there.

Zane’s home was in an assisted living facility not far from the Golden Gate Bridge. The sidewalk fronting the building was steep and we offered to help him to the door. “I can make it,” he assured us. “I can still do the moon walk. Have you heard of Michael Jackson? He did the moon walk. I can do the moon walk, too.”

And then he did.

As I drove home, creeping through downtown traffic, I began to consider scrapping my finished novel for one about a Scotch-Irish-Japanese dance instructor. It would require a lot of research about dancing, but I knew I could count on my old pal, Google. Of course, I would have to jazz up Zane’s story a bit. Let’s face it, how much mileage could I get out of the dance instructor angle? I figured a dance instructor who was also a mountain-climbing commando or a nuclear submarine captain or a double agent would be just the ticket.

“He was interesting,” I said to my wife. I was anxious to share my idea for a new book: “The Eagles of Ice Station Navarone Learn to Rumba.”

“Yes he was,” she replied, “he was very sweet. And his story . . . can you believe it? Why, you just can’t make up stuff that good.”