Writers Need Experiences
Some of the weirdest things that’ve happened to me have become vital luggage I bring along when traveling to the fictional worlds of my novels. Memory sears such experiences on my mind, along with their accompanying emotions and neurological data my senses recorded in those moments. Now that I write a lot from an indoor space and spend most of my week in the same rooms, with the same people, eating and smelling and touching the same variety of things—I depend a great deal on memory to bring to life the stories I put on a page.
I’m immensely thankful for things I’ve been able to experience in the past.
I grew up in the desert. My neighborhood was outside the city limits of a Casa Grande, Arizona, a small town south of Phoenix. We played on the driveway a lot, riding tricycles. The view beyond our front yard was a sea of tan. A long line of palm trees marked where the sandy road wound around to the country highway. We had a swing set and a trampoline. No grass. But I played in the mud when it rained.
When I was a little older, we moved into town, to a house down the alley from my grandparent’s house. Our front yard was a nice, grey gravel with a few decorative cacti. We had a patio in the back and shade from a big “climbing tree”. A little grass grew in one corner of the yard because we watered it. I can still feel the rough, dry ground underfoot as I walked through waves of dry heat and dappled afternoon sunshine. I would gather up cool, green leaves and papery, pinkish-red flowers while playing house. Other days I’d stalk the inhabitants of the lizard hotel— our six-foot cinder block fence. One summer, during monsoon season, it rained so much there was water up to my knees in the lot behind our house. My siblings and I brought a 5-gallon bucket out back and filled it with huge, slimy bullfrogs.
When I was a preteen, we’d hike boulder-pile mountains in south AZ frequently. My sister and I made it to the summit of Picacho Peak with our grandfather one day, then ran down the slope, leaping from rock to rock like goats. Even now I can’t believe I did such an exhilarating, dangerous thing. But I was a kid, and the feeling remains in memory, though my adult self no longer believes—I was invincible.
East Montana pushed the boundaries of my senses outward, leaving my self larger, more expansive, than I thought possible. Such wild, open spaces bereft of human touch change you. There’s nothing like feeling yourself being watched by hidden predators, stumbling across small creatures in the wild, hearing nothing but wind and birdcall, crunching over stones and scrub as you hike. If you come across a snake you’ll either be quick enough or you won’t. I saw plenty of rattlesnakes in MT, believe me. Growing up in AZ taught me to be respectful and keep a sharp eye out. But MT was so very big, the possibility of snakes was more frightening. I sometimes felt like I was taking my life in my hands, hiking out among miles of stone ridges, through long stretches of empty woods, unsure if someone would know where to look for me if I was injured.
The city is a different sort of wilderness. It’s like a vast prairie land in that it’s just as inhospitable. It’s full of people and you’re always being watched, but the loneliness is intense. You might as well be on a mountaintop. Except for those few and far between interactions with strangers, you might live in the city without anyone knowing you’re there, or noticing when you’re not. Such interactions happen without warning. They’re not your commonplace exchanges about the weather and “how do you do”s.
I lived in Chicago for a several years—downtown, south side, north side, and suburbs. I’ve seen so much of it, even its dark underbelly, and yet there’s always more to learn. One time I was riding the train and got to talking with a stranger who was blasting music to the train car full of people. I listen to Lecrae on occasion, so we were chatting about rap music. This guy told me he was on his way to a party. Like a party part—but he wouldn’t say anything more detailed, probably because I look like a “nice” person. He admitted he was anxious about the party. He had a friend who’d become his enemy, and he was afraid he and that guy might get into a fight at the party. Sometimes he wondered if he wouldn’t come back alive. The weird thing about this interaction was that, after running across this guy and hearing his self-examination, I wasn’t privy to the end of his story. What happened to him that night? What choices did he end up making?
Another time I was trying to find a church to visit on the north side. On the way there I met a male nurse riding the train. We ended up getting off at the same station, so we were walking together and chatting. He was exhausted and hungover from a long night. While we were walking along, I found the church I was looking for, and the nurse ended up going inside with me. He fell asleep during the service. People gave us weird looks, maybe because he was wearing a purple shirt with a low V-neck. I’d never felt like an outcast at church before, and I was glad to experience it firsthand. Churches have mistreated many people, judging their exterior looks only, hating them for being different without recognizing the image of God within. How would I experience the receiving end of this without my happenstance friend’s company? I just hope he went away struck more by my acceptance of him than their rejection.
I’ve a million stories about Chicago. Hundreds of faces come to mind. You can’t walk the streets of a city like that without being touched by myriad pictures, stories, sensations, sorrows— unless you’re walking around with your eyes closed, I suppose. You’d still smell the smells, though. And anyone who’s been to a city will tell you there’re more bad smells than good.
I’ve been to Kenya and Uganda too. I haven’t time to tell about it. But like my other experiences, like every intersection of my life with other peoples’, there are things I know experientially after that trip which changed me forever.
In conclusion, my firm belief is this: if you want to write, you need experiences. You’ve got to get out in the world and bathe your senses. Not just in good, clean nature. Not just in beauty and art and culture. You’ve got to get down in the grime and the humanness too. It will change you and make you a better artist.
