Clarissa Goenawan on 'Rainbirds', her eagerly awaited debut novel

Newcomers to fiction writing are often told, “Write what you know”.

Indeed, many authors tend to write about settings and characters they are familiar with – John Grisham, a lawyer, writes courtroom dramas, Maine-based Stephen King often writes about writers living in Maine, and the late Michael Crichton, who went to Harvard Medical School, wrote mostly about science and medicine.