Let’s face it, writing can be tiring. Most writers have a love-hate relationship with the writing process. In his interview with the New York Times, author of the Hannibal series, Thomas Harris III says, “the very act of writing is a kind of torment. Sometimes you really have to shove and grunt and sweat. Some days you go to your office and you’re the only one who shows up, none of the characters show up, and you sit there by yourself, feeling like an idiot. And some days everybody shows up ready to work. You have to show up at your office every day. If an idea comes by, you want to be there to get it in.” Fellow novelist, Stephen King, lent body to this by saying if writing is sometimes tedious for other authors, to Harris it is like “writhing on the floor in agonies of frustration.”
As writers, we are always on the conquest for hacks that will make the writing process easier and the product- books, articles, poems, listicles, etc- better. We have learned and come up with ways to hack through writer’s block and made the words leap off the reader’s page. However, there is one tool that works like a charm and makes your writing more poignant. Oddly, we don’t talk about it nearly as much as we talk about things like “show, don’t tell” and how important reading is to the writing process.
This magic potion is a very simple one, but we all know simplicity is the most intriguing expression of complexity. The hack is experiencing or what I fondly call, “just go the heck out, please.” As writers, we live in our heads, words, and in our own little worlds. I should know. I am guilty of it. While there is nothing wrong with always reading, going through your social media feed, or staying indoors, they can, over time, make cranking out words harder. Writers don’t just write, they curate the experiences of different people in different worlds, real or imagined, and find themselves at the heart of those experiences. The best writers are students of life, with colorful experiences under their pen. And trust me, experience is not in your room, homes.
Yes, you can write without this hack. I for one have written many things thanks to vicarious experience. However, the process becomes harder, like feeling your way through a dark, cramped room. Experience illuminates, simplifies, and personalizes. Writing becomes an intensely personal experience when we are writing about something we have experienced and know intimately. This is why some writers have the best (extended) metaphors. They have experienced so much they know what to compare something to.
In today’s world, consumerism gets a bad rap as we place a huge emphasis on producing/content creation. However, you do not create from a place of emptiness. What you create is a byproduct of what you have consumed. So essentially, you- and by extension, your work- are a product of what you have consumed. You can get experiences and bright ideas from books and eureka moments from that movie you have squinted at and skipped so many times in the past five months. However, nothing beats the good, old-fashioned outdoors.
You might find your next article tucked into that street you always pass but rarely stop to experience.
Your protagonist may find his/her way out of that quagmire in the conversations you have with your friends over lunch.
You might discover that wild card of a character on a bus ride to Abakpa.
But you’d never find them because you are always indoors.
To get the best out of experiencing, you have to be always mindful and present. Tapping away at your phone while you are outside is not experiencing.
Dreading each second you spend outside is not experiencing.
Rushing through your tasks and using the grab-and-go method when outside is not experiencing.
With experiencing, you live in the swirl of each moment without dwelling on the past or obsessing over the future. You feel the textures of the surrounding conversations, taste the brine in the air, hear the colors of people’s outfits and see how beautifully it all comes together. And then you document because ideas are like elusive mistresses that flee giggling when you try to hold them.
Although reading can be a way to escape reality, people want to read about an irreality that feels real. To inject a potent dose of realness into your work, you have to experience and re-experience.
Disclaimer: This post does not encourage the reader to put themselves in harm’s way in the name of experience.
Originally published on Medium.
Like what you read? Check out Blackstone and the Halloween Assumption or The Man in the Mirror.
For more posts on writing, check out 13 Lessons I Have Learned from My Writing Journey and Dear (Nigerian) Writer, You Will Suffer
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