Why This is Good

This week, while watching my mother suffer through dozens of tests, surgeries and treatments in the hospital, she joked that she wanted to experience everything that the hospital had to offer. I laughed with her, glad she still had her sense of humor, but then thought about how experiences like this help us grow as writers. We know that “write what you know” is great advice, and while I believe you are free to write beyond what you know, the more you do know and have first-hand experience with, the more authentic, real and satisfying your stories will be.

While I’m not advocating anyone go out and try to give themselves cancer (a la Southpark), I do think it is important to experience as much as possible. Don’t spend so much time focusing on learning about writing that you end up with nothing to write about. Take classes in other subjects, join clubs, attend lectures and meetings on careers, hobbies and subjects that you might not even be interested in, but that one of your characters might be. If you want to write about battling cancer and you never have, go volunteer in a hospital for a month and witness these battles first hand so you have an authentic experience to lend credibility to your story.

The most important thing you can do to gain credibility in your writing, and build a vast repertoire of experiences to draw from, is to talk to people. Whenever you can, ask people for their life story, listen to what they have to say, and remember the truth of their feelings and the way they described them when you attempt to create characters. The more you experience for yourself, the better, but that is limited to the time and money you can dedicate to research. Learning through other people is free, if you’re willing to listen, but the information you’ll gain is immeasurably valuable to your writing.