This is not the case for me. I've had a wonderful life, a wonderful family, wonderful friends, have wanted for nothing and truly feel that God is on my side. One of my good friends asked how I could write about traumatic experiences convincingly if I hadn't experienced them. I told her it's because I sympathize with people who have had bad experiences and want to understand what they ve gone through. Part of this, too, comes from where I'm from.
Most people there are sensitive and extremely nice and patient.
If you're going to be a writer, it helps to have a big heart. Because I was surrounded by loving people, this was already ingrained in me. At the risk of sending my fiction a death wish, I suppose this is what really lies at the heart of it. This has always been my intrigue with life, the contrasts that are alive in each moment, the kid who is flying a kite while another kid his age on his street is being stabbed with a knife, the way that it is unfair that I can eat while someone else has to starve. Fiction is life at its most cruel and at its most beautiful.