Actually, yes, I can imagine what you're going through...

When you work in a restaurant, you wind up an eavesdropper. I could try and paint this as a writing perk, claim that listening in on people gives me a better feel for dialogue (and it does), but mostly I enjoy catching snippets of conversations because I'm nosey.

It just so happens that this particular snippet pertains to writing:

“Of course everyone loves the book,” one twenty-something-year-old guy says to his friend. “It’s about a woman who’s lost her child. How can you not feel bad for her? You’re an asshole if you don’t.”

“I hate when authors do that.”

“What?”

“Male author writes from the perspective of a woman.”

“He’s not even married.”

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even have a kid.”

“Yet he’s writing about child loss.”

“As a woman.”

“That’s so insincere.”

“Unless you’ve suffered through something like that, you’ve got no business talking about it.”

---

While I appreciate the maxim Write what you know, the conversation’s implication is that a writer can’t possibly describe something without experiencing it. There’s a pseudo-validity to this thought process. How can someone write about heartbreak if they’ve never been in a relationship? How can someone write about camaraderie if they’ve never had a best friend? About losing a loved one if all their relatives+friends are still around? About parenting if they’re childless? About drug-addiction if they’ve never touched a hard substance?

The answer is research and imagination.

Otherwise this line of questioning can become: how could someone write about the horrors of the Holocaust without having been in the Holocaust? About killing despite never having murdered someone? About medieval wars when they were born in the twentieth century? About a disgruntled demon without ever having ventured into the underworld?

Imagination grants the ability to empathize. Just because you’ve never walked in someone’s shoes doesn’t mean you can’t imagine what’d it be like to wear them. Certainly it’s helpful to have to a large collection of experiences to draw from—that goes for any artist—but to believe someone should only write about events they’ve personally undergone is bonkers.  Entire genres would disappear. Hell, the fun of writing would disappear.

Writing is an exploration. Sometimes it’s an exploration of self—an autobiographic examination, the kind of writing the two guys I overheard would approve—but other times it’s an outward adventure. An exploration of people and places and situations that may never have been encountered in the author’s day-to-day life. A game of what-if's and how's.

What if someone grew up under these circumstances? How would they react if this happened? If they met someone like this while in the middle of that?

And sure, should an author explore a situation in an unbelievable fashion, if the author has incorrectly answered the what-if's, the writing will seem insincere. Just as we spot bad acting because the actor never took the time to believably flesh out his/her character, we will spot bad stories. They won’t ring true. But to dismiss an author’s work because he isn’t Y is as bad as dismissing an actor’s performance because he never truly experienced X.

Let's judge the quality of what is being presented as opposed to what is behind the scenes.