On Writing a City You’ve Never Been To

I have never been to New York.

I have never stood on a Manhattan sidewalk or taken the subway at rush hour or watched the skyline change color from a fire escape. I don’t know what the air smells like after rain in Brooklyn or how long it really takes to cross Central Park on foot.

And yet, I’ve spent years there.

In my head.

People assume cities are learned through presence. That you must touch a place to write it truthfully. But cities are not just geography. They are behavior. Pattern. Tempo. The way people speak when they are in a hurry. The way ambition changes posture. The way silence can be louder in a crowded room.

You can learn a city by watching people.

New York, especially, has always felt like a city built on transactions that pretend to be emotions. Conversations that sound like flirtation but function like negotiation. Relationships that move fast, not because of passion, but because everyone is managing time, leverage, and exit strategies.

That idea fascinated me long before I ever thought of writing about it.

I started noticing how modern relationships mirror markets. How affection can be abundant but commitment scarce. How people talk about love the way they talk about investments. High risk. Low return. Bad timing. Sunk cost. How leaving often feels more powerful than staying.

So I began to imagine the city where this logic felt most at home.

I built New York the way you build a psychological map. Through overheard conversations. Through films. Through essays. Through the rhythm of people who move like they are late even when they aren’t. Through neighborhoods that feel less like places and more like identities you put on and take off.

I wasn’t interested in landmarks. I was interested in dynamics.

What happens when a man treats intimacy like a system to be managed.

What happens when women compare notes.

What happens when silence stops being compliance and becomes refusal.

The city became a container for those questions.

Writing it this way was freeing. It meant I didn’t have to perform authenticity through trivia. I didn’t need to describe the exact number of steps in a subway station or the correct brand of coffee cup. I needed to be emotionally accurate. Socially precise. Honest about power.

Because people don’t fall in love with cities the way travel guides describe them. They fall in love with how cities make them feel about themselves. Bigger. Smaller. Replaceable. Desired. Invisible. Seen.

That tension lives everywhere now, but New York wears it openly.

Eventually, these observations turned into a story. Then into a set of stories. Women moving through the same orbit. A man who believes he is central until he realizes he is not. A city that keeps score even when people don’t.

I explored these ideas more fully in my debut novella, Love, Lies & Louboutins, a work of fiction shaped by imagination, pattern recognition, and a long habit of watching how people negotiate closeness.

I still haven’t been to New York.

But when I do go, I don’t expect it to feel unfamiliar. I think it will feel like meeting someone you’ve already argued with in your head. Someone you understand, not because you know their streets, but because you recognize their instincts.

And maybe that’s what writing is sometimes.

Not reporting from a place you’ve been.

But telling the truth about a place you’ve already lived in emotionally.

Love, Lies & Louboutins by IU Imaga is available on Amazon Kindle. https://a.co/d/0j1a68Wd