The writing programs, where you get the Masters of Fine Art in writing, are always telling people to “write what you know.” And students interpret that to mean your own life. Unless you’re Count Tolstoy, there’s not that much in your own life. I’d be out with a cup if I had to write sheerly what’s based on my own life. But in the 19th century, where there were so many great realistic novelists, they understood you had to go outside of your own life to get new material. Even Dostoevsky, we think of him being such an internal, psychological creative force. When he wanted to write about the student radicals of his era, he went to the archives. And then started going — he’d hear about a meeting of some of these groups, he’d go attend, to just get the material. Dickens was, of course, famous for this. Zola did it just time after time after time, going to a new area of life. He wanted to get all of France into a series of novels, and he pretty well did. He’d go from farming to warfare, to whatever he thought he really hadn’t covered yet.