Diversifying Your Brain Portfolio

You've probably heard it over and over - Write what you know. So, if you're living in small town USA (or Norway or China or Argentina), how are you ever going to write about bigger places and bigger issues than you'd find at home?

By 'diversifying your brain portfolio' - to coin a phrase.

There's a couple ways to be successful at this. One way is to travel extensively. Go out and see the world around you, even if your world is only the country you live in. While you're out there, look at everything, talk to everyone you can, drink in your surroundings. Keep notes, if your memory isn't all that great. Take pictures. When you go on vacation, keep a journal and write down things in the most exact, colorful way you can manage.

Not everyone has the wherewithal to travel. I don't any more. I'm pretty much stuck in the tiny town where I've chosen to live for now. (It's great for shutting myself away to write. Not so great for experiencing anything outside of small town life, though.) When I was in sales, I had the opportunity to see a lot of places around the US. I've also done a fair share of moving around, so it gives me some seasoning to add, but it wasn't absolutely necessary.

In this case, my suggestion is to research. With the internet, there are very few places you can't learn about online. Plus, even if you live in BFE, chances are you still have a library--with it's selection of materials and also inter-library loan. Either way, you're going to be able to spread out and diversify. Want to look at a place? Use Google Earth. Study the topography, look at the buildings, get a birdseye view. Want some specifics on a city? Try City-Data.com - use it to learn about a specific place or to get a general idea of what certain cities are like so you can create your own.

My point is to use every available resource. Even the TV can help, if you recognize--don't laugh, you'd be surprised--most of it isn't real. Try the History Channel, Discovery, Travel... Even PBS.

The main argument I've seen for this type of research is, of course, you can't really get a true sense of how things are in a particular place just by researching it. You can't really know how bad Atlantic City smells in the heat of late summer unless you've been there. (It's fairly disgusting, if you ask me. Nothing like walking out of a hotel to get smacked in the face with a fish that's been dead for a week. Boy Howdy.) You can't know how Beale Street sounds, or how breathtaking it is looking out over Lake Superior. The only thing I can say to refute this argument is: Use your imagination. Read the accounts of people who've been there, and expand on their experiences. I just gave you my impression of Atlantic City's smell - work with it, use it. Not verbatim of course, because that's dishonest. But take the descriptions you find, imagine yourself in the same place, and write your own imagined sensations. If you're in a city, what would you hear? If you're in the country, what does a whipporwill sound like? (You can get most bird sounds online, BTW.) What does a campfire smell like? What does it feel like to look out over the Grand Canyon? (Well, the sensation was pretty similar to looking out from the top of the Empire State Building, but that's just me.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is "Don't give up" and don't lose heart. If you're a writer, then write it. Jules Verne never went to the center of the earth or the bottom of the sea, but he wrote timeless classics about them. He used his imagination. And that's pretty much what this whole writing business is about. Right?