As I considered which experiences to write for this post, I had to quash many familiar thoughts.

That’s boring.
That sounds like bragging.
That’s not exactly a WOW memory.
I’m not reliving that, thanks.

I imagine you had or will suffer those same plagues when you begin to write about your experiences. I can only offer you the same advice I give myself: Shut up and do it.

Whether this is your first draft or first time ever writing creatively, your early efforts don’t need to be good, they need to exist. You will make them better with revision. You will make yourself better with practice.

I considered and discarded a few thoughts for this post, such as writing about the experience of being unemployed and the difference between the several times I was unemployed in California and being unemployed in Florida. I could have also written about the difference between quitting and getting laid off and getting let go unexpectedly. I could have written about helping to care after my mom and dad in their later years, and watching their decline. I came close to writing about the two times I was a small press publisher of fiction and poetry.

I could have written about a lot of stuff. I wrote about this instead.

I Will Do My Best

When I turned eight, I was a Boy Scout, technically a Cub Scout, in an uncomfortably snug blue pseudo-military uniform, cap, and yellow kerchief. I don’t consider the Boy Scouts something I know a lot about, because despite 10 years of mandatory participation, I couldn’t tell you the first thing about scouting. If all troops were like ours, boys and their families would flee the BSA like snakes hightailing it out of Ireland.

But it was an experience, he said ruefully. In my case, scouting was sponsored through our church, which I have previously described as fringe. Ridiculously large families, siblings whose names all started with the same initial, matching homemade prairie dresses, lots of hymns about toil and pestilence. You get the idea.

Even among this then-minor sect, our congregation was itself an outlier, the fringiest of the fringe. I grew up near a military base, so most of our congregation were service members. Coming of age in the Reagan years among military members eager to fight the Evil Empire and in a religion that believes in the apocalypse, I was more fluent in paranoic conspiracy theories than scripture.

Also, the majority of our local members – including my family – were converts to the church. If you’ve ever met a group of new converts to any type of movement – cult, political party, veganism – you know what they were like. Ride-or-die believers, hungry for rules, desperate for direction, eager to report infringements, and ready to shun at a moment’s notice.

Militaristic, nihilistic, and rabid is quite the mix of personality traits.

Being military, families moved in and out at regular intervals, usually after three years, but sometimes less. Only a few of us called the area home, and whatever friends we made – at church or school – were lost to military transfer, often without even a chance to say goodbye. It is already difficult to grow up in a religion that encourages the avoidance of outsiders, but the itinerant nature of our congregation left me constantly unsettled, without a sense of history or permanence, wary of forming attachments.

Maybe this is why for most of my life, every three to four years, I felt the need to relocate. I got to be the one who leaves for a change.

This has nothing to do with Boy Scouts, but does set the stage for what’s coming. Outside a NAMBLA convention, I can’t think of a worse environment in which to foster a group of boys through childhood rites of passage into young manhood.

As was customary, church leaders assigned two moms of boys in the group to be den mothers. I don’t know what other dens were like, but I imagine the scouting experience is greatly improved when the adults want to be there.

I suppose it’s only fair that the adults came under duress, since I also was being forced to participate. I already hated going to church, so bonus church on Tuesday was not something I looked forward to. In the interest of time, I will only briefly mention we already had bonus church on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I spent more of my childhood in a church pew than I did outdoors.

The first lucky den mother was my mom. If you’ve read previous entries, you might have come to the conclusion that my family wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. You would be correct. And, as with corporate culture, the example was set at the top.

I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. My mom wasn’t a monster. My older siblings may beg to differ, but my upbringing wasn’t as bad as some.

But my mom was not fun. She didn’t like games. She was not playful, nor spontaneous. She was not approachable, nor good with children. She excelled at dirty looks. In another life, she would have been the nun at the Catholic elementary school who terrified all the children. It baffles me that anyone who knew my mom thought she would be a good candidate for wrangling a bunch of squirmy eight-year-old boys and teaching them about good sportsmanship, nature, problem-solving, teamwork, and leadership. Also I’m only guessing that the Boy Scouts teach those qualities, because we didn’t learn any of them.

Her assigned partner in leading the Cub Scouts was my friend Danny’s mom, the only person at our church, and perhaps within the county, less fit than my mom for this job. Earlier I said my upbringing wasn’t as bas as some. Allow me to introduce “some.”

How to describe Danny’s mom? When Dana Carvey introduced his Church Lady character on Saturday Night Live, I was convinced – not metaphorically but with absolute certainty – he had met Danny’s mom. It would not have surprised me if Carvey had claimed to be possessed. He had the performance down pat – the know-it-all attitude, dowdy yet comfortable wardrobe, short conservative hairdo gone prematurely grey. And the voice! The high-pitched, back of the throat squeal, the smug lecturing, the condescension…it was an uncanny impersonation, down to the cat’s-eye glasses.

This might give you an idea of my feelings for Danny’s mom.

As I said, she was even less fun than my mom. My mom was capable of reason, if not compromise, and the occasional twinge of conscience. She could be worn down, if I made myself sufficiently pitiable, but tears were lost on Danny’s mom. Tears didn’t mean you felt sorrow. Tears were a confession you’d sinned.

Danny’s mom – I’m trying to avoid naming names and I hope she appreciates it – was a prissy rules-follower and earnest scold and, as is the wont of such people, a massive phony. She beat her kids. She stole her daughter’s babysitting money. I didn’t know this first-hand, but my mom and older siblings did and they talked. (Our secrets were off-limits, but other family’s secrets were fair game.)

Maybe that doesn’t sound too bad. Maybe Danny’s mom looms larger in my memory because I was a child. Times were different then and maybe church leaders didn’t know everything that was going on at home.

But there’s one thing I am certain they knew. Everybody knew. It was pretty hard to miss.

Danny’s mom shot Danny’s dad.

This was a few years prior, about when Danny and I were kindergarten age. She didn’t kill him, thank goodness. She also did no jail time, I presume because Danny’s dad chose not to press charges, back in the days when spouses could shoot each other without repercussion, as long as one agreed to it. He did leave, however, and good for him. I don’t have a lot of strong memories of Danny’s dad, but I remember he was fun. He always took time to talk to me, and he liked to laugh. I liked him and I know my dad liked him, and we missed him when he was gone. Everyone else at church pretended this never happened. It was never spoken of afterwards, unless someone brought it up.

Guilty.

So, how was my scouting experience? My Cub Scout den mother shot her husband.

These are who my church thought best suited to den mother a small group of eight-year-old boys: My mom, whose parenting style veered from near total neglect to shrill, micro-managing rage, and Danny’s mom, of similar style but incorporating more frequent physical abuse, petty theft, and the occasional gunshot. And that’s not even the best part.

The best part?

They hated each other.

I was too young to remember at the time, but once they had been thick as thieves. Neither of our families were military so we were among only a handful at our church that did not live on base. My mom and Danny’s mom had a lot in common. They were not too far apart in age. Both were stay at home moms with fairly large families – five kids in ours, seven in theirs, generally in the same age range. And both women were zealous, diehard converts looking for direction and approval.

You might think it was the shooting that caused the rift, but no. That came later, so the breach was still relatively fresh when Danny and I were old enough to join Cub Scouts. I know the story, but I’ll save that for another time.

That they did not like each other was clear. Danny’s mom was stiff and formal around my mom, which is quite a feat for a woman who already had a broomstick crammed up her. She spoke condescendingly, in an icky sweet yet lecturing voice, as if my mom were stupid or a sinner. For her part, mom freely talked trash about Danny’s mom at any opportunity. I was no fan of our church or its people, even as a little boy, but I might not have taken such a dim view of Danny’s mom if my mom had been more careful with her talk.

Naturally, I absorbed all this, and I’m sure Danny did as well, which made friendship awkward. I don’t know what he knew, but he had to sense the tension. It felt disloyal, being friends while our moms nursed mutual animosity.

Once, I even told Danny I hated his mom. He said, “Me, too,” and if that wasn’t the saddest damn thing you’ve read today, I don’t know what is. I’m not proud of that, but in my defense, I was eight. Later, our acquaintance became a bit more antagonistic, though never physical or too loud. Like our moms, we treated each other with forced politeness and mutual disdain.

So with this background, what was actual scouting like? I mentioned what we didn’t learn at Scouts, i.e.: anything about scouting. We did recite scripture. We learned how to tie adult ties, since our clip-on days were numbered. We read the Boy Scout manual a lot, but never did any of the activities. We memorized the Scout Motto, Law, and Oath. I vaguely remember looking at pictures of nature, so we could avoid poison ivy, but I don’t remember ever going out in nature. We were too young for overnight camping, but I don’t recall any day trips or even walks in the woods. Maybe we collected leaves or something? It could have happened, I suppose. 

I was in Cub Scouts for at least 2 years, but have almost no memories of those afternoons. Other than Danny, I don’t remember any of the other boys, which is weird, because I have vivid memories of home and school from much earlier. I can remember the faces and names of kids in my kindergarten class who moved away before first grade, but I don’t remember more than a few scattered moments from two years of Tuesday afternoons.

I suspect I spent most of the hour thinking about the episode of Batman I was missing.

So that was the environment of our weekly Cub Scouts gathering: A Tuesday afternoon hour of what amounted to a second Sunday School, led by two strict rules-following women with unhappy homes of their own devise, who each resented the presence of the other and trickled this discomfort down onto their boys, at least one of whom was actively dissociating.

That’s a lot of material to put into context. Writing about Cub Scouts isn’t exactly my zone, but I could write about two women of similar backgrounds, who perhaps felt lost and overwhelmed by life, whose friendship is at first bonded by emotional need and their most unpleasant qualities, and later severed by the same characteristics.

I could write about generational grudges, passed down from mother to son, and how two women couldn’t put aside their personal issues to allow their kids to have a friendship. I might ponder my mom’s choice to isolate me from the one kid my age who lived nearby and wasn’t likely to move away, when I had no way to foster non-church friendships and the all other church kids vanished every 2 – 3 years. I could write about how awkwardness and tension decayed what should have been formative childhood experiences, and codes of loyalty and silence between parents and children.

Of course, I didn’t think of that as material for writing when I was a kid. All I knew is that I hated Scouts and I was missing a Batman rerun at 4:30. I would never have considered writing about this even as a college student or young writer. Cub Scouts? Danny’s mom? Are you kidding? As previously noted, I didn’t want to be there the first time.

It’s taken me years to realize that these experiences provide grist for our writing, even if we don’t know exactly how to use them or if we have to heavily disguise them before putting them to paper. I might never write about Boy Scouts, but I can write about my people and my experiences, and how they made me feel, and how I carried that into the future.

In just this short anecdote, I have material about broken friendships, isolation, multi-generational grudges, forced connections, loyalty tests, trauma, community silence, and someone even fired a gun.

And before I forget, let me remind you all of that happened when I was between 8 and 9 years old. Anyone who made it through childhood has their own version.

If Danny were alive, he’d have some story to tell.

I touched on experience at the very beginning of this series, as part of write what you know. In that opening segment, I defined what you know narrowly, the way beginning writers often do, to make a humorous point about its inadequacy. Many writers interpret this advice as meaning we should write only what we’ve done, adhering closely to facts, or to write only about things we know well, topics we could teach in a classroom.

As an example, I noted that I had helped care for my elderly parents, though I would never describe myself a qualified provider of elder care. It’s not something I consider my expertise. Drop me in a stranger’s house and I might be able to whip up a sandwich or run a load of laundry, but I couldn’t offer any opinions about diet, physical exercise, or medications, and please don’t expect me to initiate small talk. I could barely handle that with my own folks.

So, in the strictest sense, I don’t know how to take care of the elderly.

But still, I had that experience. I couldn’t write a manual about caring for generic old people, but if I were inclined, I could write a story about siblings coping with the physical decline of their parents, about two old people who weren’t very good at the parenting thing and who perhaps didn’t care for their children as well as their adult children (a few of them anyway) would eventually come to care after them.

I could write about the tedium of preparing the same three or four meals on rotation and the constant blare of the television and having to hide the remote control from my mom because she had terrible taste in shows and an inexplicable habit of changing the channel ten minutes before the end of a program, which more than once sent me to Wikipedia to find out how an episode of Little House on the Prairie ended, even though I didn’t want to watch it in the first place.

I could tell you it was easier to get my dad to give up his car keys than for my mom to relinquish the check book, and that would tell you a lot about their personalities and marriage. I could write about watching for signs of forgetfulness or changes in eating habits that might suggest a new question about their health. I could tell you about all the information they withheld from their doctors over the years, because for my parents not knowing was always preferable to knowing, and I could probably connect some dots between that and their lifelong habit of keeping secrets.

I could tell you a lot more, but I won’t because most of it is gross. I’ll save it for the book.

As we parse write what you know into various components, there will be overlap. It may be hard to distinguish the difference between various strata but there is nuance.

What you know is transferable. You can teach what you know to someone. However, knowledge may or may not be relatable, depending on whether it has bearing on another person’s interests or well-being. In contrast, experience is relatable but not transferable. You cannot truly understand an experience unless you go through it.

Put another way: I will listen to your experience caring about an elderly parent, but I would never read a how-to manual about it.

Experience is also more than observation, though both can help you gain knowledge. When you observe, you watch, but may not interact. What you observe might make an impression on you, but it doesn’t touch you the same way internally and may not stay with you. In contrast, an experience is something you’ve done or something that has happened to you directly. Experience is intimate. Experience is a choice. Ideally, the choice is yours, but sadly others may choose to impose an experience on us.

Observation is passive, experience is active.

Importantly, experience has no regard for performance. In most cases, your experiences are more interesting because you didn’t excel. You had to struggle. You had to overcome obstacles. Experience is something you lived through. Experience is story.

What have you experienced?

Childhood, your teenage years, rites of passage, various first times, relationships, jobs. You may not believe your experiences amount to very much. I had that bad idea in my head for a long time. Some of your experiences might embarrass you or make you feel ashamed. Some might be too painful to talk about. But you have permission to talk about your experiences, even the ugly ones. And if you want to, you should.

Another difference: Experience triggers deeper emotions than observation.

If you’re writing with me, reflect back on experiences that have stayed with you. You might recall a moment that changed how you see the world or a peak experience, something that made you feel alive. Though I brought up sad and challenging experiences, don’t limit yourself to them. Rapture, belonging, and fulfillment are also experiences worth exploring. You might write about a time you crashed and burned or a time when you felt the full glory of faith.

Remember to cross-pollinate what happened and how you felt. What you felt adds context and depth. It adds perspective. In contrast, something you observe may anger or amuse you or make you think, but you may not have a strong emotional response until what you observe resonates. It may remind you about a time when you had a similar experience, which could trigger anger or empathy. Pure observation can prompt ideas, but experience shapes a story.

If you wanted someone to know you well, what would you tell them? If you trusted someone implicitly, if you were certain you wouldn’t be laughed at or betrayed, what would you share? Write that down. You don’t have to show this to anyone. Trust yourself and trust the writing.

Unlike today, drag used to something of a rarity. It wasn’t uncommon, but it was not ubiquitous, certainly not as visible as it is today. Some larger cities – San Francisco, New York – had more regular cabarets and entertainment than smaller cities far from Gay Ground Zero, but this was still years before televised reality competitions. When we experienced men in women’s clothing on television, they were part of a sitcom gag or a ratings stunt for a local talk show, something to be laughed at or sneered at, depending on which seat they filled.

In Baltimore, we had drag pageants, and they were an affair. Each of the major bars had their own annual competition for Miss Hippo, Miss Allegro, Miss What Have You. We had Miss Gay Maryland and Miss Gay Mid-Atlantic. These were events. A larger venue like The Hippo might have a few shows every year, mixed between pageants and fundraisers, and they always drew a massive crowd.

I attended my share of pageants during the few years I lived in Baltimore. I don’t remember much about any of them, to be honest. A few performances stand out, but I couldn’t tell you the names of any of the queens without prompting. I remember one performer lip synching to Natalie Cole’s “Jump Start My Heart” while dressed as the Bride of Frankenstein. I remember a group skit where the performers came out dressed as Patsy Cline, Judy Garland, Janis Joplin, and Mama Cass, each acting out the star’s death one by one in a drag grand guignol.

The ersatz Patsy came out with a toy airplane tangled in her wig, smiled and waved to the crowd, then threw herself down the stage steps. I may be misremembering the details, but I very much remember laughing my ass off.

But one particular performance at one pageant, and one special performer stood out from the rest, and even all these years later I can picture myself in that nightclub as if I were there.

I don’t remember the exact year or even which pageant. I don’t remember who won or the name of five of the contestants. But I’ll never forget the sixth. This is what I observed.

Bang Bang

This one particular evening, a drag pageant began as anyone might have expected. One by one, the MC introduced the contestants, young, slender queens, dressed to the nines in sequined gowns.

Back then – I won’t say exactly when – drag pageant contestants were judged against traditional standards of beauty and realness. The point was mimicking – not mocking – popular contemporary pageants and so we were conditioned to expect younger, slender, dolled up contestants on the walkway. In keeping with the realness standard, queens generally chose conventional stage names that signaled both glamour and soap opera. Delilah St. Clair, for example. I just made that up.

Non-contestants – the MCs, stand-up comics – could get away with less conventional looks, but in a pageant contestant, we expected glamour on the hoof, high hair, puffy shoulders, and every sequin in the box. This was fashion on poppers, and if the girls were a slightly more muscular and perhaps exaggerated version of Miss America contestants, that was part of the fun. Most had a significant tell – height, shoulders, leg muscles, shoe size – but when a queen captured both spectacle and realness, the result was breathtaking.

The first contestant came out, then the second, a third. I don’t remember their names, but you can imagine something like Stephanie, Staci, Alexa, Jacqueline, waists cinched, boobs bedazzled. And then came…

Bang Bang LaDesh.

The stage name Bang Bang LaDesh was one of several used by Harvey Fierstein’s character in his play Torch Song Trilogy, along with Virginia Hamm, Bertha Venation, Kitty Litter. I didn’t know that at the time. If Fierstein swiped the name from someone else, I’m not aware of it.

An unorthodox name, but fitting, as the figure of Bang Bang herself did not suggest glamour or soap opera vixen. No, Bang Bang was noticeably shorter than the other contestants, even with her hair teased up to God, and she was stout. She was technically in drag, but her dress was not snug. It was not covered in sequins that glinted in the limelight. As I recall, she wore flats. Imagine your mom being pushed onto the set of Dynasty to compete with Joan Collins for the Carrington fortune, and you might have an idea how incongruous this looked.

To its credit, the crowd did not gasp, but the mood of the room tangibly shifted from tipsy anticipation to oh, shit. Remember, this was long before the days of body positivity and plus-sized pageant contestants and winners. This was something different.

The crowd applauded politely, but no one cheered or called her name, as had happened when every other contestant walked on. It was clear Bang Bang did not have a group of friends to root for her. She was on her own.

After introducing the remaining contestants, the MC attended to the evening’s housekeeping, introducing the judges and the categories: evening wear, interview, talent…and swimwear.

A slight murmur went up from the crowd.

The contestants came out again, individually, for the evening wear walk, in the same outfits they’d worn to be introduced, again as I recall. Bang Bang wore a dress she’d made herself, the announcer said, adding that tonight was her first night out in drag. We were not surprised by this.

It was a perfectly fine dress, in that it was not a potato sack, but it was not like the gowns of the other contestants, which wouldn’t have been out of place at a prom or an actual beauty pageant. It stood out, and not in the way someone wants to stand out in a contest of beauty, glamour, and realness.

By now, I had already begun assembling an impression of Bang Bang. She did not have a cheering section in the crowd. A few of my friends who knew everybody did not recognize her. Her clothes were, in comparison, plain. Knowing how much some of my drag acquaintances spent on gear, I guessed that Bang Bang might not have had the money to buy the kind of gown that won contests. I imagined the availability of plus-sizes was a factor, not to mention the limited number of places where a drag queen could safely shop for clothes.

But she had guts. During the interview segment – which generally contained the usual contestant blather about wanting to be a good representative for the community – Bang Bang was nervous, but composed, articulate. She must have known how badly she’d stand out from the other contestants, in size, clothes…everything really. And, as she confessed, she’d chosen a competition for her drag debut. That took more courage than most of us had.

No one knew what to expect for the swimsuit competition. In drag pageants, one-piece suits were common, but a daring – and very very skinny – contestant might risk a bikini. We waited anxiously for Contestant 4.

Bang Bang came out in a one-piece, as expected, wrapped in a brightly colored hip length silk beach robe and – as I recall – carrying a small beach ball. She may have been outgunned in height and hips, but she knew how to work with what she had. Again, she presented a vivid contrast to the other contestants. She didn’t look like the others, but she didn’t look bad, which is all she needed to do. I suspect I’m not the only person in the crowd who was relieved on her behalf. As it turned out, it wouldn’t be the only surprise of the night.

The talent segment always came last and took up a good half of the evening. Contestants generally lip synched to some popular song, though I had heard that sometimes a performer might sing live. As with the contestants, I recall few of these performances. The memorable queens went an extra mile, with props or an unusual song choice, a full skit acted out on stage, like those I mentioned above. Most didn’t. They came out in another glamour outfit, usually something less “prom queen” in favor of a little black dress equivalent or an aerobics outfit, depending on what kind of song they’d selected. They mouthed their lyrics, flounced and shimmied, maybe interacted with the crowd or their backup dancers, until the record faded out awkwardly.

Finally it was time for Bang Bang. By this time, we expected something unusual. Whether that would be something unusually good or unusually bad remained to be seen, but if Bang Bang had any chance of outshining her competition, her only hope was the talent segment.

The lights went down. A spotlight framed the very center of the stage. Bang Bang shuffled out dressed in a heavy patchwork skirt, several layers of blouses, a threadbare cardigan sweater, cloth wrapped around her feet. Her wig had been ratted up and tangled, her face was pale and smeared with dirt. She lugged a collection of shopping bags on stage.

In a competition that valued conventional beauty, glamour, and realness, Bang Bang had come out for her talent segment dressed like a bag lady.

The room went deadly silent, but this time not with empathy for someone in over her head, but with expectation. We had no idea what she was about to do, but it was clearly going to be something we had not seen that night, or maybe ever.

What she did was perform to Diana Ross singing “Home” from The Wiz. The song begins softly, with Diana/Dorothy thinking of home.

When I think of home, I think of a place where there’s love overflowing
I wish I was home, I wish I was back there with the things I been knowing

Bang Bang sang along and her preparation was evident. She didn’t merely flap her mouth in a close approximation of the lyrics, as a lot of queens did. She articulated, not in an exaggerated way, but with showmanship, what you would expect on the stage. During this opening portion, she pantomimed feeding pigeons, adjusting her hair, cleaning her face, and applying makeup, as she sat on her imaginary stoop.

The song slowly builds in tempo and volume.

Suddenly my world has changed it’s face, But I still know where I’m going
I have had my mind spun around in space, And yet I’ve watched it growing

At this point, Bang Bang started performing to the crowd, making eye contact, pleading for understanding, connection. The song builds toward a dramatic diva-ready fanfare at the conclusion.

And I’ve learned
That we must look inside our hearts
To find a world full of love
Like yours
Like me
Like home

The final note on “home” lasts 10 full seconds, during which Bang Bang stood, stared up into the spotlight, and clasped her hands as if she were calling on God. It would have been hard for anyone to miss the meaning in her song choice and performance. Like her bag lady character, Bang Bang was looking for her world, her love, her home, as much as any of us were in those plague years. Bang Bang tore that shit up.

When the music faded, the club erupted in a roar like I’d never heard before and never have again at a drag show of any kind. She sold that song beginning to end. The fact that she had entered the evening as a clear underdog, if not a sore thumb, and ended with everyone on her side was nothing short of spectacular. You couldn’t have written it better if it were a movie. None of the other contestants received an ovation like that at any point during the evening.

In the end, Bang Bang came in third place, second runner up. We assumed that she had been rated lower in evening wear and swimwear, but held her own in the interview, and made up serious ground in the talent portion, where she had clearly been the best of the six. That wasn’t enough to win, but enough to put three queens in her rearview mirror. Pretty damn good for a first night out in drag. I knew some performers who competed over several years and never reached the top three.

When the MC announced her as second runner up, the crowd roared again. Bang Bang’s face told the story. She had come out earlier that evening to polite but perplexed applause. No one, even she, expected her to win, place, or show. But she won the crowd and if she didn’t take the crown, she came closer than anyone thought she might. She was surprised and proud, touched and humbled. She’d done it.

And then, as the crowd hushed, some guy standing down front called her fat.

In the quiet, the word echoed across the club, like breaking glass, impossible to miss. Bang Bang’s eyes shot up. I doubt she could see who had spoken, not with the spotlight on the contestants, but she had heard. You could see it on her face. Everyone had heard.

All that work. Sewing her outfits, planning and rehearsing her performance. Having the guts to come out without a cheering section. New to the community. First time ever in drag. Coming off a massive triumph in talent and placing third of six in a contest no one would have expected her even to enter…

And this fucker stole that from her with one nasty comment.

Before anyone could speak, a lesbian standing next to this guy ripped him a new asshole, all the way from his who the fuck do you think you are? to his who gives a shit what you think?  There is no doubt: A gay’s best friend and worst enemy is an angry lesbian.

I didn’t recognize the guy who’d spoken. If he’s alive, I bet he remembers that moment. I bet his ears are still burning from that dressing down.

The evening moved on. The first runner up and pageant winner were announced. It was fine. But I could see a bit of the glow had come off Bang Bang’s face. This was her community, but it might take more work to make it feel like home.

In fact, Bang Bang did keep competing. A year or two later, she won her first title. I had moved away by then, but I was so happy to hear that. I hope with time she had more applause and fewer assholes.

Of equal importance to your writer’s toolkit is your skill at observing life. If you don’t take time to notice what’s happening around you, how can you ever know what to write?

As with write what you know, observation is advice that is often interpreted at the surface level, as simply what you see, but this skill encompasses much more. If you had good teachers, they encouraged you to observe with all your senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. What they might not have suggested is that observation also includes your emotional and intellectual engagement with what you observe, your opinions as well as your memories.

Even good descriptive writing can feel flat if the writer does not engage emotion and opinion. You can write flowing sentences with evocative sensory descriptors, but still fail to bring the reader into the experience of a scene. This is especially important if you are writing memoir or creative non-fiction, or fiction from a close POV. For the point of view character – yourself in memoir, your protagonist in fiction – the feelings invoked by place are as crucial as its sights, sounds, and scents.

Observation is by its nature biased. You are allowed to have opinions about what you see.

What have you observed?

Trick question! You see things every day. The longer you’ve lived, the more you’ve seen. But how much have you noticed? How much have you committed to memory or written down? What has stayed with you because it triggered a strong emotion or opinion?

Probably more than you think.

As with feelings, a good place to start is with a list. Don’t worry about whether your list might be interesting to other people. The point here is to find the material you already have, which includes where you’ve been and what you’ve observed.

Your childhood home, other places you’ve lived, a college dorm, your friend’s house, the mall, your church, your first job, your best job, a park, the mountains, the beach. An art gallery, a museum, a movie theater, a concert hall. A city street, an alley, a backyard, a swimming pool. A grocery store, a restaurant, a coffee shop.

Make a list of people and write what you have observed of them. Friends, family, co-workers, students, a boss you loved and a boss you hated. Describe them physically and emotionally. Who are they to you? How do they behave? Obnoxious and annoying people are good material for observation, in part because they are likely to stir strong emotion and opinion.

Don’t go overboard. Start small. Start stupid. If you are writing about an art gallery, your first sentence might be “There were pictures hung on the walls,” and you might think, “Well done, Sherlock. We’d never have noticed.” But who cares? No one will see this first sentence. Your job is not to start brilliantly but simply to start. Describe the art, the blank walls, the flooring. Who is there? Why are you there? What did you feel? Did you like any of the art or not? Did not liking the art make you feel superior to someone who did?

You might get stuck. That’s ok. Go through your senses and write down declaratory statements. I saw, I heard. Work your way to what your emotions and opinions. I felt, I liked, I hated. This is the writing equivalent of practicing scales on the piano. You may start out clumsily and the task may feel a bit repetitive, but eventually, you’ll make the right notes.

As you would train your fingers to find the correct keys, you are training your brain to notice. You may find that more details come to mind as you write, with more specificity. Describing your art gallery, you might remember the white walls and laminate flooring, and then some specific pieces of art will come to mind, the ones that made the strongest impression on you. As you write that, you might suddenly recall a server passing hors d’oeuvres and the crackers with a chunky green compote that tasted like cold fish oil, and you remember not knowing if that green stuff was supposed to taste like that or if you should mention this to the server. Did you mention it or were you afraid you might reveal yourself as a common person with an unsophisticated palate? Let your thoughts and memories carry you where they will.

Don’t force it. As with what you know and what you feel, you may feel compelled to seek the profound observation. You don’t want to describe the diner on the corner, you want to write about an ancient cathedral or a majestic mountain view. And you don’t want to merely describe it, you want to make sense of it. You want to say something important about life.

Don’t do that. That’s not your goal, and regardless, you can’t force that kind of observation. It is sufficient to write what you observe with your senses and feelings and opinions. The rest will come. And you might find that the corner diner leads you to that profound observation, because it’s an intimate location, a place you know well. You might find something interesting to write about yourself in connection to that seemingly small, boring place.

Don’t sell yourself short. You might omit something from your writing because you assume no one else would find your observation interesting.

This is a terrible mindset. Purge it before it takes root.

This kind of thinking is bad for your creativity. When you begin to write, whether you are in the early stages of exploring the craft or drafting a story, everything goes on the page. Brainstorm without limits. Explore whatever looks interesting to you. Don’t worry whether someone else will like what you wrote down. There will be time for that later.

This habit is also bad for your soul. In essence, you are admitting – without trial or evidence – that what you see in the world isn’t interesting enough to share, that your observations aren’t worthy of talking about. This isn’t true.

That’s not to say that you will produce prize-winning prose fresh out of the gate. You won’t. But you should – I would argue must – start with the premise that you have unique experiences and a point of view, and both are worthy of exploration and expression.

Imagine if other writers had felt this way. What if J.D. Salinger had convinced himself that no one would be interested in his observations about adolescence, grieving, or dissociation from modern life? What if Sylvia Plath had believed no one wanted to read poems about her father?

Your observations are worth writing down. Your point of view is worth sharing. Being yourself is always worth it, even if you are your only reader. What you observe is interesting, because it is interesting to you. That is all the permission you need.

When you adopt a wider definition of write what you know that incorporates what you feel and what you’ve observed, you move beyond the limitations of hard fact and begin to tap into your most powerful raw material – the life already inside you.

The best part? There’s a lot more to explore.

Feelings are stupid.

In prior posts, I may have given you the impression that discussing feelings would be difficult for me. This is correct. In our house, we were never given space to express feelings in a healthy way, so we didn’t learn how to discuss or moderate them. Our household could best be described as contents under pressure, with the occasional, inevitable explosion.

Distance, better friends, and self-care over the years has helped a lot, but once this habit becomes embedded in one’s emotional DNA, it’s very difficult to extract. I’m happy to discuss your feelings, but mine? No no no.

Inconceivable.

So I approached this post with some trepidation. I had no idea what to write.

Ironic, yes? After all these years, I still struggle with expression and permission.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the deadline. As I started writing this post, a memory came forward, a very specific memory involving one friend, one place, and a relatively brief era of my life. And with this memory came a panoply of emotions.

The memory?

The perfect chimichanga

I lived in the area of Daytona Beach, Florida, for a few years in the early aughts. My ex and I quickly became good friends with Sharan, our neighbor across the street, and she and I remained in close contact after I moved away.

While I was still in Florida, Sharan found a Mexican-Cuban restaurant in our neighborhood named Los Amigos and it quickly became our standard place for a go-out, sit-down dinner.

Los Amigos was a smallish, family-owned restaurant in a strip mall on Grenada, across the street from what was then a Publix. Most evenings, the parents and teenage daughters took turns hosting and waiting tables. Occasionally, usually on weekends, some younger children would be sent out with cutlery or chips. The swing of the kitchen door allowed brief glimpses of an older woman rolling tortillas and the younger children at a table drawing or doing homework.

The first time Sharan and I ate at Los Amigos, I ordered a chimichanga and I never ordered anything else. If you aren’t familiar, a chimichanga is simply a traditional burrito –  stuffed with meat, beans, and cheese – but also deep fried until crispy.

I loved those chimichangas. The perfect balance of meat, beans, and cheese. Finely-shredded protein, so there were no big chunks of meat. No skimping on ingredients. The burritos were stuffed to the point I couldn’t guess how they kept them together long enough to deep fry. Scalding hot. Fresh cheese – not queso – melted on top, refried beans as smooth as baby food on the side.

What I most remember is the crunch. As previously confessed, I know almost nothing about cooking but I understand mouth feel. A crunchy, piping hot chimichanga gives great mouth. I’d had perfectly acceptable chimichangas before this, but I had no idea they could be this good.

This was God’s own chimichanga.

I don’t remember the last time I ate at Los Amigos with Sharan. I haven’t been down to Florida in awhile, and on my last visit we met for breakfast at a small diner on AIA. I’ve been chasing that chimichanga for the last decade and still haven’t found one that comes close. I’ve had a few that were pretty good, but not a single restaurant has been able to replicate that perfect crunchy exterior and molten filling, with the right mix of ingredients and great sides.

Los Amigos is gone now. It closed in the early 2020s, due to high operational costs and a poor labor market. Blame COVID and high, post-pandemic inflation.

My friend Sharan is gone too. I don’t know the reason.

On Thanksgiving Day 2021, Sharan made her traditional social media post of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” and hosted a dinner for family and friends. She exchanged a few holiday greetings, made plans with another friend to meet up for lunch the following week. On Saturday, she sent me some funny dog videos via Instagram, our love for and the companionship of our dogs being one of the many things we bonded over. On Tuesday night, November 30, one of her close friends texted to say Sharan had died unexpectedly at home.

Being 1,000 miles away, it didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem feasible that more than 20 years of friendship could end with a text. Over the next week, I kept checking her social media for updates that wouldn’t come. More than once, I caught myself holding my phone, ready to text “What happened? How are you doing?” though I never actually started typing, just stared at the screen.

Not long after the funeral, all of Sharan’s social media disappeared. All her photos – travel to Russia, China, South America, her voter registration drives, her dinners and Oscar parties, all her friends and family, her dogs and cats – all gone. I have a few photos and some keepsakes, but had I known…

It took a few days for denial to cave in to grief, but it came. No one said what happened. I still don’t know. Sharan was older than me, though I never realized how much older until I’d known her some 15 years. She always seemed so much younger, but she was of the age where these things happen. She’d never mentioned any serious ailments or illnesses though, no heart condition, no cancer. She hadn’t mentioned feeling poorly, and from her social media, she appeared as active as ever. After some time has passed, I asked some of her closest friends and they also could not say what happened and by then we had to acknowledge we would never know.

I don’t know if knowing would help, but I hate not knowing.

So today, my good memories of lazy dinners with one of my best friends at the best Mexican restaurant I’ve ever found and by far the most perfect of all chimichangas, are leavened by loss. Time passes and Sharan is gone and even our favorite restaurant is gone.

In the midst of grief, life seems like a bad proposition. We’re fragile. Everything hurts. We don’t last long. We don’t figure out what’s good and what works until it’s practically over. If you’re lucky, you get to hold someone’s hand while you work through it, but then that goes too.

It’s a bum deal all around.

Emotions amplify emotions

In one minor memory, dinner with a friend at a Mexican restaurant, I’ve uncovered a lot of feelings – grief, confusion, anger, love, acceptance, depression, fear. If we consider affective states of being – and let’s be expansive in our definition of what you feel – we also have confusion, denial, and eventual, begrudging acceptance.

In my brief tale, the presence of each distinct emotion amplifies those around it. Yes, Los Amigos’ chimichanga was amazing, but my recollection is heightened because I shared the experience with my friend. I doubt my sense memory would be as strong if I’d eaten there alone.

I’m angry that her family pulled down her social media without warning. That felt like a second grieving, along with some helplessness, because I had no input on this decision and no way to appeal.

My grief was exacerbated by confusion and perhaps a bit of shame, because I was not there when Sharan passed. And look – here’s a bit of magical thinking sneaking in at the end, if I let myself believe there’s something I could have done to prevent this, if I hadn’t moved away. Maybe if I had still lived across the street…

When you start to write, you may feel tempted to write about something grand. A significant moment in your life, a turning point, big emotions, but this isn’t necessary and may even be counterproductive. Expectations can paralyze creativity, as I discovered when I started to write this post. I wanted to impress you, maybe show off a little, but when I focused on being profound, my thoughts went blank.

Only after I set ego aside and surrendered to the writing did that corner family restaurant come to mind. This wasn’t remotely the topic I had in mind when I outlined this series, but it’s what arrived when other ideas wouldn’t, and my deadline was approaching. I had to write something, and this is it.

If you don’t know where to start, don’t feel pressured to write something grand.

Start with a chimichanga.

The most important thing you know is what you feel.

Everyone has feelings of some kind. A person may experience them strongly or not, express them or not, feel them in their physical body or not, but they exist.

Emotions drive us, guide us, and trouble us. They can be confusing and annoying. They often get in the way of our ability to make good choices or pursue our goals. Emotions are valid but they also lie. People can live long lives without ever learning to moderate or even name their feelings, but they have them.

Unlike opinion or even factual knowledge, emotions are incontestable. If you feel sad, no one can tell you that you don’t. They might try, but they are wrong. Your feelings may occasionally lead you astray, but no one can tell dispute what you feel, even if there’s more going on than what’s apparent at first glance. Even when your feelings are confusing, they exist.

Understanding emotion is a vital component of creative writing, and the best place to start your search for understanding is within.

Why is this important?

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

Long after readers have finished your book or story, they might not remember every character name or plot turn, but they will remember how you made them feel. Readers often describe their favorite books not in context of craft but of the emotions they felt, such as a sense of hope, comfort, reassurance, or joy. A thriller or horror novel might evoke fear, excitement, awe, or power. Your science fiction novel might create feelings of wonder and optimism. A magazine article or blog post might make readers feel confident, like an insider, or even smug.

Feelings are the connective tissue of your fiction. A thrilling plot may fall flat if the reader doesn’t feel anything, but a commonplace premise can be elevated by a strong emotional underpinning.

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”
― Robert Frost

It follows that the better you understand your emotions and the more capable you become of mining them for your work, the better you will connect with your reader in fiction.

Where do you start?

It might help to have an inventory. There’s no need to recreate the wheel when you’ve probably seen the one below, which has been going around the internet for years. I wasn’t able to track down an original source to give proper credit. There are multiple versions, but this one is commonly used in educational and life coaching settings, and has appeared on numerous writing blogs.

When the various emotional states are parsed in this manner, it’s easy to see why emotions can be confusing. You may recognize you feel sad, but is your sadness triggered by guilt, helplessness, loneliness, or boredom? Names are important. As in any magical system, knowing the names of things gives you power over them. If not power, at least some understanding.

Earlier in this series, I started a conversation about the shame cycle and how it can inhibit our creativity. We are often taught that certain people, events, or ideas are not to be discussed, certainly not written about. Considering the above list, are there any emotions you were taught not to express?

Anger isn’t polite. Don’t appear too eager. Don’t get your hopes up. Never let them see you sweat. Don’t ask too many questions.

Were you taught that some of the emotions on the color wheel were unseemly, stupid, or even nonexistent? Did you get in trouble if one slipped out? What were the repercussions? Did you get grounded when you expressed anger? Were you teased when you showed fear?

How do you start?

It might be best to start simply. Most of us don’t spend a lot of time contemplating the nuances of emotion, so this exercise may feel awkward or even daunting. You may have to overcome conditioning that warned you against talking about your feelings.

Go around the wheel and write down the emotions that resonate. Write down whatever immediately comes to mind. You might recall a person or specific event that made you feel that way. There might be a person, object, or event that represents the emotion for you. Perhaps an era of your life was dominated by one emotion or one of the color sections. High school. Mom’s second marriage. Summer after graduation. The year on unemployment. Write that down.

There might even be one emotion that’s dominated your entire life.

“That’s my secret, Cap. I’m always angry.”
― Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Hulk in The Avengers

Dig deeper

As you continue, you may find that the exercise gets progressively easier. When you write about one memory, another will attach itself and move forward. Keep writing.

If you’re struggling – writing about emotion can be hard – don’t pile on the pressure. Writing exercises aren’t a race. They’re practice. Go around the wheel and write down simple statements of emotional fact. You may have begun by simply filling in blanks.

I get angry when _____________.

__________ makes me feel sad.

I’m afraid of _______________.

I worry about _______________.

I feel disgusted by ____________.

You don’t need to write a statement for every emotion, only those that prompt you. When you’ve exhausted your list, go back and choose one to examine further.

What does this look like as a story?

Perhaps your fear statement was “I’m afraid of snakes.” This fear didn’t come from nowhere, but likely originated at a specific time and place, perhaps in your back yard or at school. Write down that memory and then explore it further.

The key to writing about abstract emotions is attaching them to something concrete – a person, object, or event. You might be tempted to find 27 words meaning fear, but instead describe the time, the place, and circumstances of your anger. Describe the physical sensations of your body without using the word fear. Write what you did or would have liked to do in the moment, again without identifying the emotion.

What was going on around your experience of fear? What triggered it? Who was there? Was anyone else afraid? Who wasn’t afraid? Were you comforted or teased? Did you tell anyone about the experience or your fear? Describe the setting and people in as much detail as possible. What other emotions come forward?

In this hypothetical example, a kid finding a snake in the backyard might feel fear first, then a sense of violation, as the safety of home is called into question. If no adults are around, the child might feel helpless or abandoned. In a school setting, the child might be worried being teased for being afraid of a snake. They might feel isolated if their emotional response doesn’t mirror their friend’s, or they might be ashamed of themselves for not being brave.

Emotions travel in packs. We tend to feel the broad emotion first – happy, sad, angry, disgust, fear, surprise – and only later whittle that down to the nuanced feeling. We often feel two or three things at once, as in the above example – worry, isolation, shame. Pro tip: Emotions amplify each other. Fear compounded by shame is much stronger than fear alone.

When you zero in on an emotion, focus on concrete detail, look for the sub-layer or amplifying emotions, and see how rich your writing becomes, even at this early stage.

In an earlier post, I made the distinction between what we write and what we write about. In the above example, being scared by a snake is the story, but feeling helpless, abandoned, embarrassed, or ashamed is what the story is about.

Why are you always talking about childhood?

Good question.

I’ve already quoted Anne Lamott saying that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of their lives. In If You Want to Write, Brenda Ueland also wrote of asking her students to write about their childhood memories.

“And I asked for childhood experiences for this reason. A child experiences things from his true self (creatively) and not from his theoretical self (dutifully), i.e., the self he thinks he ought to be. This is why childhood memories are the most living and sparkling and true.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write

Childhood emotions are powerful. Our early years are a cascading series of new experiences, including emotional. If we put thought into it, we could likely point to our first remembered encounter with fear, affection, or offense. These new experiences land harder. They feel bigger. A first experience with shame may be confusing, because it comes with no warning or explanation. We don’t know what it means and we might not even have a name for it.

Why? Kids are bombarded with new feelings, but can’t put them into context. They don’t have any practice moderating their emotions, or emotional traffic signals to put them on pause or slow them down. Kids don’t yet have negative experiences to add melancholy to their first feelings of love, so crushes loom larger. They don’t have memories of overcoming difficulty to leaven their first big disappointment, so failing can seem catastrophic.

Children also lack filters. An emotion bubbles up, so an emotion is expressed, no matter how inappropriate. Ueland shares a story about a child who had witnessed a funeral and wished her grandfather would die so that she could go to one. In her innocence, the girl had no context for death or what it would mean for her grandfather to actually die. She only knew that people dressed up for funerals and brought flowers, and decided she’d like to attend one. An adult expressing this wish would give even the most open-minded person pause.

As adults, we tend to forget what it was like to be a kid. Many find children unfathomable, unknowable, illogical, perplexing. But the truth is kids are emotion engines. If they are unfathomable, unknowable, illogical, and perplexing, so is life, and this is how they experience it.

That’s not to say we don’t have big feelings in adulthood, but in my experience, these emotional highs tend to be more complex, often combining multiple and even conflicting emotions. In childhood, our foundational emotions are more pure. As you write what you feel, look for those big childhood memories. Don’t add nuance or context, or apologize for your younger self’s selfishness, naivete, or melodrama. Remember what those pure experiences felt like, and add context later.

When you want to feel emotional fire, go back. When you want to make sense of emotions, come forward.

What do you mean by context?

Context comes with experience and understanding. Adults have feelings too but unless we are under extreme duress, we do a better job regulating them. We can control our anger so that we don’t get fired from our jobs or get into a fistfight. We swallow our pride to apologize, even if we don’t mean it this time.

Here is a thought experiment. Imagine you are at a shopping mall with your mom. Maybe your mom is not in the picture, for whatever reason, but imagine. Pick another person in your life who served as a trusted adult.

Imagine you have separated and agreed to meet at a specific place in the mall at a specific time. If your mom is a few minutes late, even fifteen minutes late, you are not likely to worry. If you are window shopping or otherwise entertaining yourself, you might not even notice. Experience has taught you that people can run a little late. Your mom may have lost track of time or might be waiting in a long checkout line.

Now imagine you are a child, eight or twelve years old. Your mom said to meet her at noon at by a certain exit and she is late. How does child-you feel? In your experience, your mom is never late. She has drilled into you the importance of punctuality. She may have levied a mild threat of punishment if you did not adhere to the agreed upon time.

For the first few minutes, you might not think anything of it, but after five minutes or ten, you might start to worry. Time goes by much more slowly for children than adults, so a ten minute delay may feel like hours, especially if fear starts to gnaw. If you were an imaginative child – as I was – you might think something bad has happened. Maybe she forgot you had come along and drove home without you. Maybe your mom is hurt. Maybe some ailment has befallen her, or maybe something has happened to her – some person has happened to her – as you have heard on the news happening to other women.

Imagine the difference in how you might feel as an adult and how you’d feel as that child. Scanning faces and bodies for your familiar mom. Wondering if you should go look for her. Wondering who will help. Is there a security guard? Will the people working in the shops help you or not take you seriously? Can the other shoppers be trusted?

When you consider your feelings, write freely and with vigor about whatever comes to mind. Follow your feelings to wherever they lead. But when you have your list of feelings to consider, also look back as far as you can, to times in your childhood when you felt these emotions for the first time or most strongly.

I knew going in this post would be tough, but I promised to write with you. Since I suggested you write down what you know, I will also do the homework.

FML.

Early in my writing life, as a student, I was Very Serious about write what you know. Write about your life. Write about things you know a lot about. I took this to heart and because I have a bad habit of being literal minded, I did not look for a nuanced interpretation. In my defense, my writing teachers presented this advice in its most basic form, suggesting that students write about our jobs or an interesting relative or that one time at band camp.

If a writer was supposed to write what you know, by god, that’s what I was going to do. But I had a problem.

I didn’t know shit.

I’d never experienced that one time at band camp. I was never a very social kid and thanks to my parents, we were estranged from nearly every member of both sides of our extended family. I didn’t have any special skills. I had just started a crappy retail job to pay for college. I wrote a lot of anecdotes about my family, my college campus, and my job, but nothing that moved me.

Today, I have another problem.

I still don’t know shit.

My life was and is boring. I’m risk averse. I don’t sky dive. I don’t have addiction issues. I’ve never lived in my car. I don’t own a gun. I don’t involve myself as a third player in other people’s relationships. I show up for work and pay my bills on time, even when I don’t feel like it. I do not want to live in interesting times.

I’m severely lacking in basic survival skills. I function in the kitchen, but neither cook nor bake to any great effect. I cannot perform the work of a carpenter, plumber, interior designer, contractor, or electrician. I have no specialized background of the type that lends itself to drama – lawyer, doctor, police officer, cowboy. I cannot write with any accuracy about the life a stripper or the Village People.

I’m useless with cars. I hate gardening. I have killed a cactus.

The arts? I write, but as well noted, the trope of the writer writing about the struggles of the writer has been beaten to death. I have acted in small roles in garage productions and enjoy painting and drawing, but could not teach you anything special about theater or art. I know nothing about music other than what I like and I cannot sing. I don’t care about fashion.

I attended college, but could not afford to live on campus and had to work to pay my way, so I missed all of what should have been formative experiences, both the grand and mundane (and humiliating). I’ve done a lot of volunteer work, for community centers, small theater companies. I’ve shepherded loved ones through health issues and helped care for two elderly parents. But while these were things I did, I don’t feel sufficiently proficient in any of them to assert that I know them, to the extent I could deploy them in fiction.

Because that’s what write what you know means, right? You know enough about a topic to portray it in fiction, to give the reader a sense of place and time, to create verisimilitude. You create moments of recognition. A reader with similar experiences will appreciate your authenticity, and may recognize events that have occurred in their lives. You could teach this class.

Do I know anything?

I know a little bit about a lot of things. I hoard trivia and nuggets of information. As a kid, I was an avid comic book reader and so today I’m able to catch the references and easter eggs in superhero movies that a lot of people miss. I’m available for parties!

I know a little bit about art, a bit more about writing. I have eclectic tastes in film and music but can speak reasonably intelligently about various artists and artistic movements, but could not teach a class. I can tell you about federal government contract law and regulations, but I’d rather you not ask. I’m good with Excel. I’m reasonably proficient at desktop publishing and podcasting.

So far, I’m failing to see any relevance to fiction.

My jobs?

Comic store clerk, bank teller, department store stockroom, receptionist, very low paid intermittent newspaper writer, call center goon, call center goon, call center goon, book store clerk, call center management staff, client account manager, arts & crafts store clerk, writer, content developer, webinar creator, podcaster, managing editor, project manager.

Once I got my feet under me, my jobs got progressively better, but I’ve not reached the height of any large corporation nor run for office nor worked for a politician for pay or as a significant volunteer. I am no cutthroat. When I was younger, I applied for work that would have provided some grist for write what you know – roller skating rink disc jockey, community center activities manager, 911 dispatcher – but alas, I have the in-person charm of a call center goon.

If I were serious about the writing thing, I should have gotten a job at Waffle House, but instead I know a lot about cubicles, stupid corporate HR policies, angry customers, federal contract law, and again, comic books. Unless there’s a clamor for an inside look at stacking dishes in a department store kitchenware department or talking to angry electric company customers, I’m not going to get far. Worse, I’ve been working from home for the last 20 years, so I don’t even have the chance to observe interesting characters in the wild.

As you can see, if I limit myself to writing what I know – facts and skills and various bits of know-how – I am well and truly fucked. Fortunately, the definition of knowledge is expansive.

I wish I had known that.

Today, I know so many other things.

Thank god.

If there is advice for the young writer more often misunderstood than “write what you know” I don’t know what it is.

This adage is not inherently terrible, but it is incomplete, bordering on lazy, and once you’ve had time to ponder it, this starts to feel intentional. Imagine if half the Ten Commandments consisted merely of “Thou Shalt Not” without explanatory detail. Shalt not what? You’d have to suspect God was messing with you.

But this is what young writers are told, ad nauseum, and in fairness, it does work.

For some people.

John Grisham earned a law degree, which granted him inside knowledge of court rooms and the legal system. Ken Kesey worked a night shift as a nursing assistant on a psych ward, did time in prison, and volunteered for CIA-financed, government-run experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, including LSD and peyote, all of which may have had a little something to do with his writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Herman Melville worked on a whaler, Mark Twain as a pilot on a riverboat, and Kurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden in a slaughterhouse marked number five. While serving as a nurse in World War I, Agatha Christie learned everything she knew about poisons. Richard Hooker (Richard Hornberger), author of MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, was [spoiler] an Army doctor during the Korean War. Andy Weir’s hobbies include orbital mechanics, astronomy, and the history of human spaceflight.

Write what you know worked out great for them, but perhaps it’s less suited for us mortals. I don’t want to go to law school or prison and I’d prefer not to be captured by Germans and  fire-bombed, thank you very much. This is why god gave us fantasy novels and science fiction with very little science. I have a strong suspicion this is also why there are so many books whose protagonists are fiction writers, often struggling with writer’s block. Write what you know.

What do you know?

For writers making their very earliest efforts, understanding what you know is a reasonable place to start. Maybe you do have experience with the criminal justice system or medicine or military service that you might like to use in fiction. Good for you!

As an exercise – and warm-up for more interesting inquiries to come – make a list of things you know. For now, stick with the literal interpretation of knowledge. If you need to narrow this down, try this: If you were to teach a class on something, what would it be? Is there a topic or field of information that prompts you to nerd out? If you were training a new co-worker, what could you tell them? Certainly Agatha Christie could have taught a Poisons 101 class.

If you were writing your biography, which parts would be the most interesting? Perhaps you have an unconventional job experience or esoteric talent. You probably have a few skills or topics about which you have stored away a wealth of information. You may not have a law degree in your back pocket but you must have something.

Any gravediggers out there? Master seamstresses or bakery chefs? Jugglers, ventriloquists, magicians? Botanists, biologists, or scientists of any kind? Art historians, librarians?

Find something to brag about. Imagine this knowledge makes you one of the world’s most fascinating people. What would you say to Oprah? Write it down, even if you think it’s embarrassing. No one will read it.

Why isn’t this enough?

If you haven’t figured it out, a literal interpretation of write what you know will take your writing only so far. Writers – or maybe it was just me – may mistake write what you know with writing about information or about events that actually happened to us. We may think we are supposed to write about facts or that our characters should have the same jobs as we do, the same family makeup, the same ethnicity or background.

We look at great works of fiction and wonder “But how did he know that?” Of course we are curious about how and where other writers come by their ideas. Why wouldn’t we be?

If your list of what you know feels sparse, join the club. My next post is My Turn, and believe me, my list won’t be anything to write about.

Fortunately, we all know much more than we realize.

In the last My Turn post, I confessed writing this series as much for myself as for anyone. Specifically, for the version of myself that needed it a long time ago, the young man I have somewhat belatedly become fond of.

My nascent attempts at journaling failed because I saw nothing of note in my life. As a student in creative writing classes and workshops, I dutifully completed my exercises in observation and description, visiting places, making lists, but I never found stories in them.

For a long time, I struggled to find premises and then struggled even more to expand them into an actual story. Naturally, the premises had to be “cool” or “high concept”, but what I discovered is that the cooler the idea, the less story I had to hang upon it.

My teachers told me there were ideas everywhere, as if there were a premise tree outside waiting to be plucked. No one mentioned that I was supposed to care about what I wrote. Our conversations focused exclusively on the external idea and craft. We never touched on the internal writer, and the question of what we might want to say or why we should write at all.

Even when discussing theme, we never explored how to arrive at one or how we might query ourselves to uncover it. If the topic were broached at all, we were told to write about something we cared about, but I had another problem – I had been taught not to care too much about anything.

My few successful stories were personal, bordering on private. A slightly fictionalized version of an argument with my mom that revealed something deeper. An imagined future for myself and my best friend, another writer who I loved more than anyone. But these were not the kinds of stories we were supposed to want to write. They didn’t tackle big ideas. They weren’t universal. They didn’t address the human condition! As though my life was something less than human.

Someone I respected even said, “As writers mature, they stop writing about themselves.” Today, I would like to explain to her how wrong she was, but back then, that’s what we were supposed to do. And I had no problem with that, because I was ashamed of where I’d come from. Myself was the very last person I wanted to write about or be.

I grew up in a rural area, emotionally and physically sheltered, part of a fringe religion that discouraged too much interaction with outsiders. I have a hard time writing the word “childhood” because it wasn’t.

I survived to college and at my soonest opportunity quit church, got contact lenses, grew my hair out, pierced both ears, bought my own clothes, and pretended that awkward, poorly dressed, hapless, terrified kid ever existed. So not only did I not see the rich material life had given me, I drew a bright red line separating Now from the Before Times.

My life story at 19: I was born, and then I went to college.

And there were other layers of shame. This part gets dicier, but I promised to write with you. Let us throw caution aside and – as the phrase goes – get deep in the paint.

Other than anger, our family did not express emotions. I’m not sure that collectively we could have even named more than four. We were a family that kept secrets, from outsiders, extended family, and each other. I would be much older before I learned a few of the reasons for these secrets, and I suspect there are more. Our religion was insular, distrustful of outsiders and intolerant of anyone who even thought differently, much less behaved in a way that deviated from a narrow acceptable norm. And of course, we were a congregation of scolds and tattletales.

My parents treated anything short of perfection as a failure, including of character. Not only were they disappointed, they were certain we failed on purpose, as though we were capable of greatness but withheld it to embarrass them. No goal post was so far away that it couldn’t be reset when you neared it, and no good report from outside was ever good enough. I didn’t understand why my teachers liked me and my parents did not. “Angel in the street, devil at home,” mom said.

Our house was not a place to be free and creative. My parents talked up the kids who played sports or musical instruments – or memorized Bible verses – but didn’t know how to encourage what I liked: writing and drawing. My stories were dumb and my art wasn’t very good and why don’t I read good books instead of junk? Also, being a writer is a lonely life and there’s no money in it. Still, I did it anyway, alone in my room with the door shut. I learned to protect my creativity by hiding it, as though it were some shameful habit.

Look inside? I didn’t want to be there the first time.

Writing about this would have been painful, and also an emotional betrayal. Between church and home, I had been instilled with the fear of being discovered speaking out of turn. Secrets, shame, and fear of failure are paralytic to the creative mind.

In college, with my new clothes, plucky haircut, and pierced ears, you will likely not be surprised to learn that I also came out. In those days, this was generally not considered a good career move. See above re: religion, shame, deviation, perfection, but writ large over our entire society. And yes, the gays are cool now but back then the role models for a young writer were few and the places where we might publish as our authentic selves were fewer.

I had finally escaped the old life, only to find my new life had its own limitations. Before I’d even begun to figure it out, I was taught not to talk about this either. I had another secret, and this was the most deviant of all.

That’s not a happy beginning, but the story has a mostly happy ending. I’ve unlearned, rejected, and healed that shame, though of course it lingers. Like scar tissue, it is a reminder of an experience, but not something that pains me. As you can see, it’s easy to bring back, but frankly, my load was relatively light. It didn’t feel light to me, not when I was a kid, but I know people who have carried much worse.

I don’t share that to bring down the room, but to convey that I know whereof I speak. I understand the kind of complicated emotions and human dynamics that clog up our creative outlets. I understand why it’s hard to look inward or backwards, and why it might be tough to speak what you believe and feel.

Secrets, shame, conformity, perfectionism. They stop us from looking inward, but that’s where our best ideas, our best creative selves, are waiting.

These are things I wish I’d known.

I hereby grant all of us permission to write what we want, to adhere to whatever belief we want, and share whatever opinion we want. Still not sure about your strongest opinions and beliefs? We’re headed that direction. Next Monday, we’ll start with terrible advice and discuss why it’s terrible, and then we’ll start the journey inward.

I hope you’ll write with me.

“Where do you get your ideas?” the beginning writer asks. “What should I write?” The question is so common it has become a punchline in writer conversations. An unkind one, in my opinion, but I digress.

Of course, for the beginning writer, the question is vital. It is also more than one question.

Sometimes, this is a question about development. How did Margaret Atwood turn an idea about women lacking physical freedom and bodily autonomy into The Handmaid’s Tale? How did the concept of Germany winning World War II become Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle?

Sometimes, this is a question about the premise. How did Atwood come up with the concept of Gilead or PKD arrive at the premise of the Allies losing WWII? What made Andy Weir ponder an astronaut trapped alone on Mars (The Martian) or Susanna Clarke the scenario of two great magicians with opposing philosophies of sorcery (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell)?

Both are great questions, important questions. The answers are long and specific to the writer and the story. If Atwood had the inclination to explain, I suspect we’d learn that the origin and gestation of The Handmaid’s Tale were wildly different than the development of Alias, Grace or The Edible Woman.

The answer to the question of premise is often opaque, involving platitudes like observation, brainstorming, or asking “what if…” Not that you shouldn’t do those things, but as advice goes, “observe” is a headline, not an article.

What the young writer needs is the long answer, which can’t be obtained during an author Q&A. For that answer, we have to go back a bit further in the process to examine the third question buried in “where do you get your ideas?”

That question is Where do I start?

The interior writer

The answer is inside.

As I wrote last time, writers often look for story ideas externally. Unfortunately, when writers seek inspiration solely from external sources – emphasis on solely – they will discover this method is hit or miss. A newspaper article, a friend’s secret, or a fairy tale turned on its head might produce a hot hook, but when we try to write through it, we falter. The story may fall apart at the midpoint or when we realize the catchy premise was the only good idea we had.

The problem? Despite a great premise, you had no reason to write that story. You had no driving force, and when a story lacks drive, it falls apart.

As readers, we discover a book like The Handmaid’s Tale or The Martian, and wonder where the authors got these great ideas. Why did they want to write about Gilead or Mars? But consider this: What if neither was particularly interested in Gilead or Mars?

That sounds nuts, I know. They wrote whole books about them. Atwood wrote two. Andy Weir’s first three books are set in outer space. But I suggest that neither Gilead nor Mars were the driving force of these novels. Surely Atwood didn’t sit around daydreaming about Gilead, thinking “Wouldn’t that be cool?” There’s a reason we’ll never see a novel set in Gilead from the man’s point of view.

Rather, Gilead and Mars were the methods the authors used to convey something they found inside themselves.

Margaret Atwood writes about women’s roles and identities, societal restrictions, autonomy, inner strength, and individuality. You can call this many things – her opinions, themes, philosophy, but these central ideas are what drive her writing. The specific story concept is built on top. In the Gilead novels, Atwood created a repressive, patriarchal culture as her method to explore the idea that intrigued her.

What was Andy Weir’s idea? Weir has mentioned being intrigued by the idea of an astronaut trapped alone in outer space. However, I suspect the story started to come together – to feel real to him – when he came up with the central organizing idea.

Here’s a quote from early in the novel:

At some point everything is going to go south on you. Everything is going to go south and you’re going to say ‘This is it. This is how I end.’ Now you can either accept that or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math, you solve one problem. Then you solve the next one, and then the next and if you solve enough problems you get to come home.

Andy Weir’s central idea for The Martian reflects his belief about the best way to live: You face your problems and solve them one by one. The driving idea of the story is survival and an astronaut stranded on Mars was the method for exploring it.

Along the way, both authors found that external idea. Atwood certainly had plenty of real-world examples of Gilead to inspire her. Weir had a hobbyist interest in orbital mechanics, astronomy, and the history of spaceflight, and had played with the concept of humans stranded on Mars in his webcomic, Casey and Andy.

But where they found their specific story premises – Gilead and Mars – is far less relevant than why and how they pursued them. Certainly, the methods (external) were both of longstanding interest to the authors, but without the point of view (internal), the novels would not have become what we know today. I argue that the method was far less important than the driving force behind the story.

Don’t believe me? Read that quote from The Martian again. It’s the central theme of the novel, the premise that drives every moment of the plot. I’ll wait.

Did you see the words Mars or astronaut in that paragraph? Remove that idea from The Martian – and all the ways it cascades through the novel – and the result would be a decent, but much blander, version of the novel, a techie page-turner, but not something to stir your emotions. This belief drives the narrator, who in turn drives the story. However, separated from the method, that idea still sounds exciting. Can you imagine that quote in the voice of a soldier, someone recently unemployed or divorced, a convict arriving at prison, a politician facing a scandal? Read it again.

That bit of dialogue is the heart of the novel, and it came from inside the author. You have some of that inside you, as well. You only need to find it.

Ideas

The process of creation can feel mystifying. For a long time, I wasn’t sure I had “it” – that special something that makes the difference between a writer and a non-writer, or a great writer and a story hack. But I wasn’t missing anything. I just kept looking outside myself, when the answer was inside all along.

This mindset requires an expansive and perhaps idiosyncratic definition of ideas. The writing zeitgeist tends to focus on the narrow view – the idea is what’s interesting, the reader hook. A boy wizard, a man dressed like a bat, horny hockey players, a clown that eats children. But none of those are actually interesting without the elements the author brings to them. Observations, experiences, opinions, biases, life lessons, and strongly held beliefs. Give your attention to the latter and the former will take care of themselves.

If you’re not sure what to write or where to begin, start by asking why you want to write and what you want to tell us. Once you understand that, you’ll find it easier to find ideas that excite you. In fact, I’ll argue you’ll have more ideas than you can ever write.

If you aren’t sure what your passions are or your beliefs or your themes, that’s ok. We’re heading in that direction. But first, let’s talk about what’s stopping us from accessing our raw material and ultimately our story ideas. This isn’t therapy, so I’ll be brief.

Shame

Shame comes in many colors. Nearly every writer I know has dealt with shame involving the creative process. Parents discourage artistic pursuits in favor of academics or sports. Our efforts are judged against best-in-class artists. Your friends want to know how your life is going, until you start talking about your novel in progress. Everyone loves music, movies, and books…until you want to create some.

Families keep secrets. You may feel shame around cultural or societal taboos. Your faith may discourage you from writing about certain topics or writing about them in a raw or honest way. Trauma and enforced silence keep us from connecting with our passions and even our thoughts.

The problem is not that you lack ideas. The problem is that you have rich material that you have been trained not to talk about.

So what do you lack?

Permission

• Permission to write badly
• Permission to write what someone else thinks you shouldn’t
• Permission to sound like yourself
• Permission to not write the Great [Your Nationality Here] Novel
• Permission to write small, personal stories
• Permission to write about things that are ugly or sad
• Permission to write only for yourself
• Permission to skip the get-together scheduled during your writing time
• Permission to call yourself a writer

Like your ideas, permission comes from within. The only things between you and your writing are your time, your thoughts, your creativity, and your desire. That’s it. And those are all within your control.

I won’t sugar coat – this can be a tough obstacle. Unlearning what you’ve been taught, especially what you been taught by shame, isn’t easy. Giving yourself permission to be yourself – or even simply to be – does not come naturally for everyone. If this describes you, take baby steps. Start with permission to write badly and to sound like yourself. Work up to permission to write about family secrets.

If you are more open to it, take the leap. Look in your metaphorical mirror and give that person permission to write whatever comes to mind, as badly as needed, and repeat.

What next?

For the next 20 weeks or so, I won’t be talking about finding premises or developing those premises into stories or novels. Rather, we’ll examine the simple quandary of wanting to write but not knowing where to start. By the end, you’ll have twenty or so first steps you can take.

As we go, I hope to point you places where you might find your raw material and start to build a solid foundation from which to write with purpose. As a bonus, when you lay this foundation you may find it easier to spot story ideas in the wild, ask those brainstorming questions, and develop your premises into complete tales. You may also start to hear what will become your voice.

We’ll start by discussing where your internal ideas come from and then explore concrete exercises for putting them on the page. Next week I’ll share some bad advice and tell you why it’s bad, and then we’ll get to the good stuff, where I’ll try to point you in the direction of material you will feel passionately about.

Spoiler alert: We’re going to spend a lot of time looking inward.

Bonus: It’s cheaper than therapy.

For now, think about permission and how much more you need for yourself. Maybe you’re raring to go or maybe you’ll need some time to think about it. Regardless of where you stand today, remember: most of your writing will not be published. Most may not be shared with anyone else. Not all your ideas will turn into stories or completed pieces. You may have good reasons not to write about a topic or to not pursue a story idea. But do consider the idea and strive to give yourself both permission and grace.

Homework

Other than your writing, I don’t intend to assign homework at the end of every post, but I may suggest some reading here and there. This time, I want to share three writers who have given me permission to write small, intimate vignettes and autobiographical fiction. None of these suggestions contain traditional, Big Idea-driven stories. All of them focus on the kind of small moments we experience every day, but don’t recognize as story material. All of them are lovely. All of them are art.

In Heating and Cooling, Beth Ann Fennelly writes 52 micro-memoirs, some lasting no more than a half-page paragraph, sharing brief moments of her childhood and adult life. Topics include an annoying couple on an airplane, memories of a starring role in a fourth grade play, and a doctor appointment with her mom. As much poetry as prose, Fennelly lands both beauty and humor in a few sentences.

Harvey Pekar’s writing leans minimalist, and focuses on autobiography and memoir form. Often lasting no more than a single page, Pekar’s stories might follow his fictionalized self on a trip to the record store, recount a brief conversation in an elevator, or break down one of his many appearances on the David Letterman show. He made a whole career of documenting moments most of us miss, long before social media culture taught the more generations their every step or facial expression deserved to be recorded.

Raymond Carver’s writing has been described as minimalist and as dirty realism, though he generally rejected labels. For our purposes, I’m most interested in how Carver eschews tidy endings and answered questions. Often, his stories, even his longer ones, linger in the arena of vignette or character study. Situations do not resolve. Stories may end with a key character simply walking off the page or two characters deciding to call it a night without any conclusion or realization about their problems. You don’t need to have a grand character arc to write a story. Sometimes, simply following people in their difficulty is enough.

As you’ll see in these works, a piece of writing does not have to be lengthy or complex to be memorable or meaningful. Observations, experiences, memories, or idylls are all stories of a kind. They are all writing. I hope you find them encouraging and inspiring, and will look for similar moments in your own lives. I hope you’ll write them down.