If you’ve been following this blog series on finding your writing ideas in the life you already have, you may have gotten the impression I’d like you to start journaling. This is correct.

You might hate journaling. You might think you suck at it. I did hate it and did suck at it. You can read about that here. My childhood wasn’t especially happy and it wasn’t even interestingly unhappy. I never believed my thoughts or experiences were worth writing about.

The adults in my life also didn’t do a good job selling journaling as a concept. We only ever heard about the journals and diaries of famous people or someone who had lived through a perilous time. What did a kid growing up in rural Maryland, with no special talent in art, music, or sports, who – like most of my generation – was raised on television, root vegetables, and neglect, have to write about? It was hard enough competing against regular kids. How could I ever measure up to Anne Frank?

Our lives didn’t vary much from day to day – school, home, tv, dinner. It didn’t occur to me to write down what we did in class or how my teachers looked or sounded, or who I liked or didn’t and why. I never thought about remembering my parents’ dinner conversations, though a few stand out, such as my mom’s insistence that Jimmy Carter was a communist plant sent to destroy America from within. These things have a way of gripping the mind.

Today, of course, I wish I had written that down, a document of my school days, no matter how tedious or poorly written. I wished I’d saved some of my funny drawings or a particularly good book report. I wish I’d written about the time my best friend got sick in the cafeteria and how the lunch ladies made him clean it up before he was allowed to go to the office, or about the fist fight between the redneck bully and the six-foot tall black girl who’d caught a racial slur in the hallway one too many times. Even without having it written down, I can still hear her books slapping the tile floor and see the headlock she threw on him and their arms swinging in close quarters and how red that boy’s face was when teachers finally pulled them apart, partly from anger and exertion, but also from enough fear and humiliation to be deliciously satisfying to at least one observer who’d been on the receiving end of his shit.

Today, I love those memories, even the ugly ones. Back then, I was afraid of them and the feelings they elicited. They didn’t sound like something that belonged in a journal. I didn’t understand I was allowed to write about what I observed and experienced, even if no one else would find it interesting, even if it was a bad thing. I could write about other people and what happened to them, and how I felt about all of it.

It’s been years since I’ve thought about my friend puking or that glorious fist fight, but that’s the key to getting started with journaling. You start with what you have, something small. This often comes unbidden, a random thought that becomes a memory that takes you to a specific place, like a decrepit brick middle school without air conditioning and often without heat, where you spent three of the shittiest years of your life, and you follow that memory into a cafeteria thick with adult indifference and then to a hallway crowded with kids between classes and you remember a very tall and quiet black girl, a girl who carried her books against her chest like a shield, who never walked with anyone, not even other girls, or spoke or laughed with them, and who, like you, walked with her head bent down, avoiding eye contact, willing herself invisible, a girl you noticed all the time because it was impossible not to notice her but also because you were so different but inexplicably so very similar, and you never knew what to do with this observation, this sense that you knew her better that you actually did, which left you sad and confused, and you remember the day she had enough.

You might find these memories don’t pop up when you sit down with a journal. Memories are stubborn that way. I’ve developed the habit of writing them as they come, on paper, phone note, or in an email. Even when I’m busy at work, I can spare five minutes to write down something good. This is an excellent reason to keep a stack of 3 x 5 cards handy.

It helps to start with something specific, a place, a person, an event, and then allow that memory to lead to the next and the next and the next. In her book Syllabus, cartoonist Lynda Barry suggests a simple exercise that can help you identify the kind of objects that trigger deep emotional memories.

Syllabus is a memoir-like writing manual centered around Barry’s instructions for her college-level creativity class. In the first class session, Barry gives her students a noun and tells them to write down the first ten memories they associate with that word. Then, each student picks the memory that piques the most interest and expands upon it, answering specific questions: where they are, the time of day, their age, who else is there, what they notice. Over the course of the class, students use observation and writing exercises to create their own lists of nouns and use memories like these to create short comics.

To ease her students into the exercise, Barry starts with a simple word: Car.

This is a great word for memory work, because cars are ubiquitous. Even if your family didn’t have one, you knew someone who did or you’ve seen them on television and in films. Most likely, you don’t remember your first car ride, because it occurred so early in your childhood, and you couldn’t possibly count the number of times you’ve climbed in and out of one.

But individual cars…those you remember. To start the exercise, make a quick list of ten memories involving the word car. You might write down specific cars: the family car, your uncle’s clunker, the first car you bought with your own money, the car you envied, the mail truck, the car that ran over your pet. You can choose Matchbox cars, pinewood derby cars, or even the Batmobile. You can write about your experiences with cars, something that happened in, on, or around a car that stands out: a special conversation, an intimate moment, breaking down, having an accident, getting a ticket, being lost in a strange place, your first road trip.

When you have your list, pick one that jogs the most intense memories. Don’t think about what someone else might choose or find interesting. Pick the one that stirs you. Write down everything you see in your mind’s eye. Don’t worry about narrative – start with notes and lists and get down as much as you can, the colors and details, the people, your age, the time of the year, what happened. If strong feelings are involved, write those down.

When you exhaust your thoughts, turn these notes into a short first-person narrative. You don’t need a great opening line, nor do you need to craft a story. Put the memory on paper as it comes to you and let it be what it is. If your first car memory triggers another story about the same car or a memory about a different car, keep going.

Repeat this exercise with other cars on your list or start a new list with a different noun. As you go about your day, make note of what you encounter and observe to create a list of nouns that you can use for this exercise. It doesn’t matter what – go with what you notice and what rings a bell inside you.

Don’t look for “interesting” things to write about. In fact, you might get more from mundane topics. I haven’t had a novel’s worth of peak experiences, but I’ve been in a lot of cars. I bet I could find ten memories about the grocery store or doing laundry, and at least one of them would remind me of a significant time in my life, which would prompt more memories, as well as ideas that connect something as tedious as doing laundry to deeper emotions, a mistake, a learning experience, or possibly even a time I felt loved and at peace.

I like this exercise because it gives us something tangible to start with. I also like it because it doesn’t automatically lead to venting or bad memories. Journaling has a way of bringing out bad feelings, and in fact, the angry journal is a staple of life and fiction. It’s safer to write down what we don’t want to say out loud. This is valuable, but my hope for you is that you don’t get lost in negativity. Family, exes, and employers very likely trigger strong memories, but don’t let the bad ones drag you down. And they will.

If you use your writing journal solely as a dumping ground, you may unintentionally create a habit of opening it only when you feel bad or angry. You might resist going back to it, because it’s packed with ugly memories. You should write the bad things. They are going to happen anyway, so you might as well use them. But don’t forget the neutral and the good.

And that’s what I really like about Lynda Barry’s exercise. Nouns are neutral. There is nothing inherently positive or negative in a car or a pond or a church pew. Your first car might be attached to a sad story but not the next one. You may have fallen out of one tree, but climbed another.

If that exercise doesn’t grab you, start somewhere else. Writing is the land of Do What You Want. Start with what you know and feel and observe and believe. Write about your ten favorite cartoon characters or Swedish pop stars or football players or flowers or recipes. I’ve spent the last few months suggesting places for you to find ideas that are already inside you. I hope you got something out of it.

In time, as you prime the well, you’ll find your memories begin to volunteer. Sometimes they’ll compete for your attention and you’ll have to choose which to write first. With practice, you’ll tap that vein and it will stay open and the gold will rise up, so much good stuff you won’t know what to do with it all.

Plus you always have an excuse to buy a new notebook. Win-win.

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The Manor Mill arts community will hold its 2026 Writers Retreat on November 12 – 15 at the Oldfields School in Glencoe, MD. On Saturday, November 14, the retreat will welcome Stephanie Dray, New York Times bestselling historical fiction author, for a keynote address.

Building on two successful one-day programs in 2024 and 2025, the retreat expands this year to encompass two full days of networking and learning opportunities, and an option for guests to stay overnight to extend the event to four days.

The full Thursday–Sunday residential experience includes meals and special evening activities. Single day and Friday-Saturday non-residential tickets are also available. Overnight guests will enjoy lodging, all meals, all day sessions, all evening programs, and additional special activities from Thursday through Sunday. Day pass guests will enjoy all day sessions & lunch and can add on evening sessions and grab dinner on their own.

Past years have attracted both new and experienced writers working in all genres and forms. Over the course of the weekend, you’ll explore a rich range of topics: craft and technique, querying and submissions, marketing, promotion, and much more.

For event location, itinerary, and reservations, click here! Manor Mill is offering early bird pricing until September 8 for day passes and residencies.

Manor Mill is a restored pre-revolutionary grist mill that houses a fine arts gallery, classes, a live music venue, ceramics studio and workshops, just over the hill from the Monkton Hotel in Baltimore County, MD.

Founded in 1867, Oldfields School is an independent all-girls day and boarding school serving grades 9 through 12. Its mission is to embrace each student’s authentic self, educate through collaboration, empower the individual voice, and inspire confidence and continual growth, leading to a life of purpose.

Last year, I attended a workshop on the Business of Writing. The seminar touched on a variety of areas affecting a writer’s business, including taxes, copyright, income streams, etc., but the largest portion of the discussion focused on establishing a brand.

I don’t like the word “brand” as it sounds a bit soulless to me. Inauthentic. McDonald’s is a brand. I prefer terms like persona or personality. Identity. Message. At the time, I likened the idea of an online persona to hosting a dance club. As the owner, you can choose whatever music you like, but eventually you need to advertise the vibe. Otherwise, your country & western bar might attract customers looking for a rave, and no one has any fun.

Most of the other writers at the workshop had their brand. Science fiction military thrillers. Anthropology-themed murder mysteries. Young adult fantasy. Memoir.

At the time, I was part way into my novel in progress and had other projects on deck, but didn’t have a finished book. I had 20+ published collections as an anthology editor, but that’s a) the past and b) other people’s writing. I couldn’t point to a tangible product as an example of what I do.

My deeper problem is that I don’t write in any particular genre. I write characters and stories, and the genre reveals itself as I go. I don’t mean that pretentiously, as if genre is irrelevant or a secondary consideration. I love genre fiction!

But I love all the genres and want to write in all of them, and the characters who intrigue me tend to suggest where they’d like to reside. A man who beheads people for money is going to look pretty silly in a contemporary novel, but he’s at home in a fantasy setting.

So, yes, at the time of the workshop I was working on a fantasy novel, but my next projects were – in order to be determined – a murder mystery, a contemporary novel with a religious theme, historical sci-fi, road trip crime, historical romance murder mystery, contemporary social satire, and a historical road trip ghost story.

In other words, a branding nightmare.

But the thing is…I don’t care.

I write what I want.

As do the writers I admire.

Among my favorite writers:

• Margaret Atwood (speculative, historical, contemporary, fantasy, and science fiction, plus poetry and nonfiction)
• Alan Moore (superheroes, fantasy, horror, science fiction, erotica, humor, social satire, historical fiction, in addition to poetry, essays, songs, comics, and prose)
• Ray Bradbury (crime, science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction)
• Octavia Butler (fantasy, science fiction, time travel, horror)
• Marge Piercy (contemporary, historical, speculative, and science fiction, plus poetry and nonfiction).

If you know any of those writers, you know their brand. If you pick up a novel by any of them, you know what you’re getting, even if you don’t know exactly which genre you’ll be reading. We might haphazardly lump Butler, Bradbury, and Moore into a broad category of genre fiction, and pigeonhole Atwood and Piercy as “women’s fiction” but their readers know there’s more to their work.

What ties their work together? Their knowledge and feelings, their observations, their experiences, their obsessions and beliefs. Their brand is comprised of their themes and their questions and what they want us to know about life. All the stuff you have inside you already.

For each of those writers, their name is their own genre.

I do love writers who stay within a well-traveled lane: Patricia Highsmith (psychological thriller), John Irving (contemporary fiction set in New England), Anne Tyler (contemporary fiction set in Baltimore), Tana French (murder mysteries set in Ireland), Kurt Vonnegut (absurdist science fiction). There is something to be said for going deep, for mining the same land to find new ore.

But I am not them. I am also not Margaret Atwood, Alan Moore, Ray Bradbury, Octavia Butler, or Marge Piercy, but they are the writers who most inspire me.

I don’t plan to stick to any genre or even any form. I also write short stories. I have been journaling quite a bit over the past few years and have plenty of mud to fling. Like a few of my recent blog posts, some of these stories may be confessional creative non-fiction. Some may be the truth disguised in fiction so that the people involved wouldn’t recognize themselves.

I have written poetry and would like to write some plays before I die. I would be happy to see one produced in an empty garage. That’s enough for me. I like comics too and would love to publish a few before I die, but artists aren’t cheap.

I will write what I want. For now, that means this blog, which I love writing so much more than I ever thought I could, and my novel in progress, which is nearing the finish line. After that, I’ll start on whatever jumps out at me from my list. Contrary to everything I just wrote above, I have ideas for two more fantasy novels set in the same story world and will probably move over to one of those. I’m really excited to work on the murder mystery and the contemporary novel with a religious theme, though. But in the end, it doesn’t matter.

I’ll write what I want.

I’ve been looking forward to this post.

As you are getting started as a writer, looking for ideas or exploring what you’d like to write about, there is one piece of advice I would like you to elevate above all others.

Write whatever you want.

Write about people you know. Write about people you don’t know. Write in any genre. Write from real life. Write fantastical worlds. Write about your niche interest. Confess your sins and weaknesses. Write a play. Write a poem. Write a comic book script.

Oh, did someone say that comic book writing isn’t serious writing? Fuck ‘em.

Did someone say literary fiction and poetry are pretentious? Fuck them, too.

Did someone complain you use too many swears? Guess what!

Is your work is too confessional or too abstract? What do you say?

Write whatever you want.

There will be people who tell you not to reveal family secrets. They will tell you not to confess too much. They’ll tell you to worry about what people say on social media and how the market will react.

Ignore them. Write about the bad people in your life. Write about family secrets. Write about the time you were the bad person, and the secret you hope never comes out. Brag about the time you got it right and admit when you screwed up or hurt someone.

You may reach a point when you’d like advice on obscuring real events and real people, especially if you want to keep peace in your family or maintain your reputation as a good person, but first you must write it all down. There is nothing off-limits.

Your characters don’t have to be likeable. They can be violent and selfish and use bad language. The words protagonist and hero are often used interchangeably, but they aren’t synonyms. The main character can be amoral, self-centered, tricky, and mean. There will be times you need advice on bringing your reader into a story about an unpalatable individual, but first you must write it all down.

You can write about people who don’t look like you. You can write entire novels about characters who only look like you. You can write solely from your life or you can explore diverse experiences. Your cast of characters can be monochrome or rainbow-colored. You may want to show your work to a knowledgeable person who can tell you what you did well and what you got wrong, but first you must write it all down.

You will encounter an endless line of people who’ll say you can or cannot do this, or that you must or must not do that. In my experience, these people will scold you no matter what you do, so do what you like.

There will always be people who want to tell you what you can’t do.

I’m here to say: You can do anything.

The choice is entirely yours.

This should be an easy one. The entire premise of this blog series is telling you what I want you to know. I want you to know what I’ve learned about writing and being authentic. I want you to know this knowledge was mostly gained through trial and error and failure. Lots of failure. I hope to help you avoid repeating my lengthy learning curve, so that your start your writing life with permission and confidence to do as you please.

I want you to know there’s nothing more important or emotionally fulfilling than being and expressing your authentic self. In my blog the past few years, I’ve shared the following quotes more than once:

“There is only one like you in the whole world. There’s never been anyone exactly like you before, and there will never be again.”
– Mr. Rogers

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
– Gospel of Thomas

I want you to know that what you feel, observe, experience, and believe are worth writing about. You don’t need a hot premise or grand insight or epic tale. Those are nice to have, perhaps even necessary if you want to sell some books, but your most important raw material is already inside you.

A former co-worker once joked that a recent meeting lasted long enough for everything to be said and for everyone to get the chance to say it. This is also true of writing. If you believe someone else has already said what you’d like to say, you are correct. It’s all been said before. But no one has said it from your perspective, in the way that you’ll say it.

The stories will continue until everything has been said and everyone has had a chance to say it.

Your story or novel or blog may reach an audience that hasn’t heard it before, or readers who need to hear this story from your point of view, in your voice. I may read a bit of philosophy or advice nine times without absorbing it, but experience an a-ha moment when a tenth person says the same thing in a different way that connects with my experience and way of thinking.

I’m asking you to be that tenth person.

No one owns a monopoly on ideas. Write to the people who are interested in what you have to say. If someone isn’t interested, they aren’t your audience.

Here’s a confession: While writing these posts, I’ve hit those same roadblocks. I know I’m not breaking new ground here. I’m sure someone else has said this before and probably said it better. I worried I was wasting my time and possibly embarrassing myself.

But I reminded myself – I’m not writing for the people who have read all this before. I’m not writing for people who have more ideas than they can handle. I set out to write about how we embark on creative work and why and how we struggle. I wanted to talk to other writers who, like me, thought they hadn’t anything interesting to write about, and I wanted to help them find what they already had.

I haven’t said anything new, but I hope I said it differently, and I’m confident I said it my way. That’s what I want for you.

There is no guaranteed outcome. Not everyone can write well. You may have an audience of zero. That is beside the point. Your creativity is yours to express. If you want to write, write.

That is what I want you to know.

Fiction

I don’t intentionally send messages with my fiction, but as I noted, it is not possible for a human to write without any point of view. If you have read AI-generated writing, you have noticed that it feels lifeless. AI can mimic strong sentence structure and style, it can choose great vocabulary words, but it has no point of view. It is incapable of creating feeling. When it tries, its best work is melodrama. I suspect someone fed AI quite a bit of Paul Harvey. You probably don’t know who that is, but look him up and tell me I’m wrong.

Humans have experiences and beliefs that influence our writing. Consider even the most bland, by-the-numbers action thriller. Every one of those stories includes the familiar scene of dithering bureaucrats or some functionary trying to bind the hero in red tape, and inevitably, the hero ignores them. What message is the writer sending? Taking action saves the day. Without that message, you’d have a different story, if any story at all.

I write characters who haven’t quite figured out life. They mess up. They zig when they should zag. They have questions that can’t be answered but they keep looking. Given the choice to change and grow or hold the line, they hold the line. They might have their goal in hand but set it down because they don’t trust victory. They run when they should stay and stay when they should run. They know better and do it anyway.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, including this writer, is purely coincidental, I assure you.

Considering my fiction, what do I want my readers to know? Again, I looked to my current and upcoming projects for clues.

• You can do your best and still fail. Join the club.
• Not everyone gets a happy ending or the ending they want. In fact, most people don’t. Character arcs and unambiguous resolutions and hero’s journey are fiction. There is always a day after. But that works in your favor too, because your bad day doesn’t have to be your last day. A new story starts tomorrow.
• Learning from your mistakes is a lot harder than it appears in books. Human beings need a lot more than 300 pages. Sometimes a lifetime isn’t enough.
• Being yourself is your most important work, but this requires that you know yourself. Do the work. Never live a life someone else imagines for you.
• Bloom where you’re planted is good advice, but if you have the choice, uproot. Find better soil, a beautiful view, and great neighbors.
• Trust your gut.
• Choose your moral values and stick to them. When you feel lost, let them guide you. You may not always win, but you will be right in your soul.
• You are worth it, and you can be redeemed.

Once you have the makings of a moral code – what you believe – you may feel compelled to tell me about it. Unfortunately, outside of a Ted Talk your audience doesn’t want to be lectured. However, when what you believe arises from what you feel about what you’ve experienced, you will find ways in your writing to tell us what you want us to know.

Here we wander into memoir, but this applies to fiction as well. Memoirists want us to know what they’ve experienced, what they feel about it, what they’ve learned, and what beliefs they have adopted. This might involve anything from vacation travel to the death of a loved one, with the important distinction of context. In essence, context tells the reader why this story matters. Without context, a list of your experience will read like an itinerary, whether you traveled through Morocco or a funeral home. With context, such as a new strongly held belief or a human truth, mistakes to avoid or conduct to emulate, you have a unique personal story with a potentially broad application.

For our purposes, I’m bypassing books that lean academic. If you have a special expertise that you’d like us to know about, please write something for us. But those books tend to be more technical in nature, less involved with personal experience and feelings, and that’s the path we’re taking. In this post, I’m talking to the writer who wants me to know about traveling through a foreign country or navigating the healthcare system. You want to document, create order, add context. You want to find closure and find community with people who have lived through the same experiences.

Sometimes, the writer wants to confess.

Writer Julie Powell broke through with her first, Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, in which she wanted readers to know what it was like trying to cook every receipt in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. A travelogue through a cookbook, not a country.

But her much darker follow-up, Cleaving: a Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, Powell wraps the story of her apprenticeship at a family-owned butcher shop around her confession of her ongoing betrayal of her husband via a long affair with a former lover. I don’t know why she wanted us to know that, but she did. And that half of the book reads essentially as confession, with several thousand readers in the other side of the box.

Powell does not try to explain the affair or make excuses. She gives no reason for it, other than physical obsession. She doesn’t pretend that it’s love. Her husband is aware of the affair but she neither ends it nor asks for a divorce. She provides no context, such as a midlife crisis or rocky patch in her marriage. There’s no resolution. Powell’s affair eventually peters out, but she still longs for it. Her marriage does not end, but she doesn’t express any regret or admit she’s learned anything about herself.

You too can write what you want me to know, your adult version of What I Did Over the Summer. You can educate us about something you know or somewhere you’ve been. You can tell us about someone you knew. You can tell us about the worst days of your life and tell people experiencing something similar that they aren’t alone and that they can survive it too. If, like Julie Powell, you’ve committed an intriguing sin, you can confess.

Like most fiction, most memoir is uplifting. Even if there is no happy ending, there is resolution. There’s hope. But also like fiction, memoir can be a downer. It can end ambiguously. It can end without answers to big questions. And that is true to life. We behave in ways we can’t predict, ways that contradict our morals and beliefs. We hurt people we love. We don’t learn lessons. We don’t find our motivation. We don’t resolve our backstory wound. We simply are, and sometimes that’s not attractive.

While memoir is more suited to writing what you want us to know, it is not uncommon in fiction. You simply need to hide it a bit better and aim for the right audience.

Here I’ll dip back into the well of Anne Lamott for some examples of how she used both fiction and memoir to tell her readers what she wanted them to know. Anne Lamott frequently speaks of writing as a gift. She wrote her first novel, Hard Laughter, as a gift for her father, who had been diagnosed with brain cancer and would pass away not long after she completed it. It was also the book she wished she had been able to read during this difficult time.

• She wanted her dad to know that his life mattered, that he would live on in his children and in this book after he died.
• She wanted him to know that she had inherited his talent for writing, that his life mattered to her specifically, and that she had skills to carry her forward. She wanted him to know she’d be alright.
• She wanted the next family to know what they might face after a similar diagnosis, that it was ok to laugh in the face of stress and grief, and that everyone has their own way of coping. She wanted that family to know they weren’t alone.

Similarly, Lamott’s Operating Instructions was the memoir she wished she could read, about being a single mom, both during her pregnancy and in the first few months of her child’s life. As she wrote, her best friend and main support person Pam was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the memoir became a document of Pam’s journey out as well.

• She wanted to her son to know what it was like for her to be single and pregnant, and excited and scared. She wanted him to know where he came from and about the people who helped along the way.
• She wanted other single moms to know about post-partum depression and stress, about puke and not having time to shower, but also about the overwhelming feeling of love she had for her new little person, and that most of the time, the good days outweighed the pukey days.
• She wanted other new moms to know that they did not have to do it all or even half, and that some days simply keeping the new little person alive was the best they could hope for.
• She wanted her son to know Pam, who would die while he was still a toddler. She wanted Pam’s young daughter to have honest, loving stories of her mom’s life, so that she could know her as well.

As an art form, memoir can be daunting. I doubt I could write one. But there are other forms of writing that can express your desire to tell us something important. Write a poem or song lyrics. Write a short story or start a blog. Write a letter to someone you love or a future generation. Write to your past self to explain what went wrong or what went well and what you learned from it. Start simply and move forward.

Write fiction. Kurt Vonnegut wanted his readers to know that war is awful and that life is absurd, but worth living. Margaret Atwood wants her readers to know about the strength of women, their depth of character, their capriciousness, and their struggles. Matt Haig wants his readers to know that being alive, in the body and life you have right now, is pretty great. The comics writer Warren Ellis wants his readers to know that the world is weird and that being weird is wonderful. Toni Morrison wanted us to know about the complex realities, internal lives, and communities of Black Americans, particularly of Black girls.

None of them preach, but they all showed us what they wanted us to know.

Movie mogul Sam Goldwyn famously (allegedly) said “If you want to send a message, try Western Union.” And he was partly right, because modern audiences don’t enjoy morality plays. But he was also mostly wrong, because every story has a message. Every writer wants you to know something. This desire informs their choice of characters, genre, theme, and story.

What I’d like to impress on you is that you can make a conscious choice to tell me something, you can communicate with me with intention, or you can wing it, pretend you don’t have any message, and tell me something anyway. I believe you will find your writing more powerful and more meaningful, and you will feel more motivated to create, if you make the conscious choice to tell me something.

“I want you to know this,” is a bold statement, but then so is “I’m a writer” and you’re already doing that.

Everything you need to create stories is already inside you. You may need to invent some characters or a science fiction world or a murder puzzle, but everything that will make your story come alive, everything that will ensure your story is uniquely yours, is already there.

Next week, we’ll look at permission again and crank it up to 11.

I don’t write my questions as often as I used to. Perhaps because life has answered a lot of them. Given enough time, you will find out where you’ll be in the future and what you’ll become and what the world looks like, whether you want to or not.

So, here we are. This is it.

This is it?

But when I was younger, I did write stories to make sense of life and my big questions. What could I have done differently? Will I still be ‘me’ when I’m older? How will I change and will it be for the better? If not, what can I do now to make sure that doesn’t happen?

I wrote about one of those stories and what happened to it here.

When I was in college, I met my first writer friend. First actual friend, honestly, but also my first writer friend. We both liked poetry, classic post-war fiction, and nihilistic humor. We looked down on a lot of the same people, which is a common bonding approach for 18 year olds. Our writing could not have been more dissimilar – I found it comical that all his stories began with someone taking a slug of alcohol, he complained that nothing happened in mine – but our zeal for writing brought us together.

I moved away after college, when phone calls were expensive and the occasional letter the only way to keep in touch on a budget. I worried that we were slowly losing touch. My friend was still in school, dating girls I never met, working crap jobs without me there to listen to him bitch about them. I was also working crap jobs, living with multiple roommates I had nothing in common with, trying to have a social life while the only places for that were an hour’s drive away. The three-hour time difference didn’t help.

From his letters, I also learned he was still writing. I was not.

I still scribbled in notebooks, but I wasn’t writing with great regularity and without the impetus of classes and compadres, I wasn’t finishing any stories or creative non-fiction. I had gotten caught up in volunteer work, which became the center of both my social and political life (I use the term political rather loosely here…) This was my contribution and it was important to me, but it also took from me. Time, mental energy. I didn’t intend to stop writing, but I drifted away from it.

But as always, I got back to it. And one of the things that brought me back were my questions.

Where would my friend and I be in ten years? There was an above average chance he would be married (and as it turned out, he would) and that I would not (and wasn’t). Would we still be in touch? What would our friendship look like? What if he kept writing and I did not? What would happen if we lost that foundational element of our friendship, our passion for writing and self-expression? Could we still be friends or would I lose that too? Could I imagine a life for myself in which I was no longer a writer?

So I wrote…about us ten years or so in the future. My stand-in character kept an intermittent journal but had lost interest in writing. He has friends but not the kind who challenge or inspire him. His writing feels like kid stuff. He assumes his friend had also experienced this lessening of passion, but discovers he had not. The friend shows him dozens of journals filled with poems and essays he’d written over the years, unpublished but documented, meaningful to him.

What happens next? Not telling. It was a good story. Maybe one day I’ll pull it out of the files and freshen it up. You’ll have to wait until then to find out.

But examining those questions kicked me out of a rut. I didn’t want to be the person who fell out of love with writing. I didn’t want to lose that spark or my connection with other creative people. So I did something about it. I started a writers group at the community center. That eventually turned into the zine we published with our own writing. That led to my volunteer work with a few small theater companies and the production of my (badly written) one-act play, as well as paid writing for some local independent weekly newspapers. I wrote and submitted another story to a national anthology, which the editor said was near the top of his b-list but didn’t quite make the cut. I don’t recall that story with as much fondness, so I suspect he was trying to be encouraging.

All of that because I decided to write what was already inside me – my questions or my anxiety, take your pick – and explore possible answers. Even all these years later, I still consider it one of my better stories, even without a high concept, quirky protagonist, or outlandish situations.

I had another story I could have shared here, one that examined questions about my family and what might explain some of their behavior. I wanted to figure them out. I wanted to feel empathy for people I didn’t understand and test drive some conversations I might have around our problems. In the end, I gave that protagonist a piece of a happy ending, devoting almost an entire chapter to a gift he’s given, something he has wanted for a long time but didn’t believe was possible. The gesture resolves a lot of his questions and the pain he carried, and opens new avenues for him. Simply writing out this development made me feel a little better, even though I knew this gift was only fictional. It felt good even to imagine it might exist.

About a year later, in the real world, I received an identical gift from a family member. Not metaphorically identical, but supernaturally identical. The exact thing I had given my protagonist. Exactly as I wrote it. And it had the same effect on me that it did on my fictional stand-in, with the added magical sensation of holding in my hands something I was certain did not exist, something that could not exist so I had to write a story about it in order to give it to myself.

I can’t promise that the act of writing out your questions will manifest similar real-world gifts for you, but I can’t say it won’t.

Writing is magic.

You might write to entertain or educate. You might write because you want to communicate, to tell stories about people like you, to let others know they are not alone in the world. You might write simply because you enjoy it and you’re good at it.

Sometimes, you may choose to write a story or poem or essay to ask questions, as a form of exploration.

This inquiry overlaps with the question of theme, but can explode into other directions. Considered thematically, your exploratory writing might consider the existence or nature of God, or the source or meaning of evil. You might look for meaning in life, a purpose for our being alive. History, morality, free will, identity, power, what it means to be human…all big questions and major themes in literature.

But you might also have smaller, more personal questions.

Other people

While one writer tries to throw his arms around the nature of evil, you might ask similar questions about people you know. Why was my parent abusive? Why did my spouse cheat? Why does my child act in a manner so far outside my morality?

You are allowed to write about what you don’t understand. You have permission to speculate, even about someone you know in real life.

Do you have such questions or people in your life? Take a step backwards from the situation and treat the individual as you might a character in a story. Write what you know about their background and their personality as you experienced it. What do you know about their successes and disappointments, the people who shaped them? Write what you know about their morality, their choices, the repercussions, their mental state, and any external factors that could have made an impact.

Though the focus of your exploration is a specific person, event, or brief time, you still tap into broader themes. Write until you begin to understand them. Write until you begin to feel empathy. Write until you start to root for them.

You may never know the right answer, but you may develop theories.

Yourself

You can also turn this lens on yourself. When have you let yourself down? When have you acted not your best? What could you have done differently? Write a new ending to the story.

Don’t limit yourself to looking backwards. Speculate about what’s coming next. Write about your future and where you might end up. Who is with you? Who doesn’t make it?

What would your parents be like as grandparents? What would you say to your high school bully or worst teacher if you met them again as an adult? Will they change? What will become of you and your best friend? What’s going to become of your wild, reckless cousin?

Perhaps you’d like to write about the person you want to become. Create a character who is not you but who embodies the qualities you admire and would like to emulate. Who would you become if you could be anyone?

You cannot literally become a new person, but you can steal their qualities for yourself. What would you look like if you were braver, more confident, less distracted, less mindful of negativity? What if you were the person who followed your dreams, instead of the one on the sidelines?

And what if you don’t evolve? We’re not required to change and most humans don’t. We learn, we grow a bit, we make incremental change, but at a fundamental level, most people stay on the path where they are set. What would happen to you then?

Another way to frame this question is to write about what worries or scares you. Imagine a life where the worst happens and another where the best happens. What choices take you down those paths?

Write until you can see an ending for yourself and if you want, write a better one.

All of us

You can also turn this inquiry to civilization. What would the world look like if you could choose our path? Writers envisioning the future often turn to dystopia, as in Brave New World, 1984, The Hunger Games, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Parable of the Sower, but you might prefer to explore a world more to your liking, as in the Culture series, The Ministry for the Future, or Walkaway. Or you might like to imagine one of each, as Marge Piercy did in Woman on the Edge of Time.

The two basic questions

Underneath your explorations are two essential questions: Why? and What will happen?

If you’re looking backward, ask why and keep asking why until you reach an answer that feels right to you. Consider someone’s behavior – negative or positive, though you might find that negative behavior elicits stronger emotions and memories – and make your inquiries. Ask why about their surface behavior, their motivations, they underlying emotions, the source of those emotions. Go back until you find the root of the issue. The person whose behavior you question can also be yourself.

When you’re looking forward, ask what will happen. What will happen if I don’t change, if I leave this situation, if my dream comes true or doesn’t? What will happen if (when) I lose someone important to me or lose my health? What if the world doesn’t get any better (by whatever measure you choose). What if it does? Consider what these possible futures look like, what events take you there, and who else is there. Imagine how you’ll feel and how others around you might react and behave.

Is this therapy?

Maybe.

It depends on the questions you have and how you approach them. In general, I find people unfathomable, so I write, in part, to understand them. Writing is my way to getting my arms around the world, to make the messiness of life a bit more manageable.

When I was younger, I also had a lot of questions that my family, religion, and education didn’t help answer. Writing gave me a way to tackle those questions privately, in my own way and in my own time.

Writing can be cathartic. It can provide understanding and perhaps closure.

Your mileage may vary. How you use it is up to you.

Bringing it together

As I continue through this list of what we know, you can see how all the disparate things we know begin to converge.

Your questions about human nature and behavior arise from what you’ve observed and learned. Your questions about the past are influenced by what you’ve experienced, and perhaps by your obsessions and fascinations. Your speculations about what may become of you, your loved ones, or the whole of civilization grow from what you are observing about them today.

What you do with these questions depends on how you feel about what you’ve experienced and observed, what you’ve learned and what you believe.

In contrast to previous topics, writing your questions requires you to lean into speculation and fiction. The answers are things that haven’t happened yet, or something you can never know with certainty. And yet, your questions about life are your own. They are already inside you. Your answers are as unique as your experiences and observations.

I reiterate that this doesn’t require you to think in grand terms or explore universal questions. You have permission to write about yourself without worrying that anyone else will find it relatable.

It’s human nature to wonder where we come from and where we’re headed. Don’t be afraid to ask.

Unlike nearly everything else I’ve written, this post would have been easier to write when I was a kid.

I was a child of obsessions. Unfortunately, none of my obsessions turned out to be very useful in adulthood. I could have hyper-fixated on physics or chemistry or higher math, but no. Instead, I lost myself in comic books, television, and mystery novels, over time progressing from Encyclopedia Brown to the Hardy Boys to Agatha Christie.

I don’t have those kind of obsessive interests any more. I’m not going to regale you with trivia about early 20^th century jazz or the minutiae of post-modernist theater or the New York School of artists and writers.

When I spoke of writing what you know, I described myself as a jack of some things, master of none, and that’s a fair assessment of my mindset when it comes to obsessions and fascinations. I have a lot of individual interests, but I tend to delve into them to the extent I needed them for a specific purpose. I might be a more interesting character if I cultivated a serious geekdom around something I enjoy – mid-century confessional poetry, Grand Guignol theater, 80s independent film – but on the other hand, at this stage of my life, whom would I entertain with my repertoire?

My geekdom

I do have interests. I am drawn to specific types of characters and stories in film, television, and books, and am repelled by others. I have tastes. I’m not a Philistine, even if some of my tastes are lower brow.

If I were to emulate someone like Howard Chaykin, who combined his interests in jazz, sex, politics, demons, and zombies in his masterful Time², what niche interests would I pick?

If I were writing the most indulgent work imaginable, it would likely feature some combination of tough women and mean gays, secret societies, kid gangs and chosen families, political intrigue, fringe religions, the Kennedy curse, comic books, early 20th century European literature, ghosts, Nazis, writers and artists, theater and film, time travel, talking apex predators, conspiracy theories, Celtic mythology, alternate worlds, and doppelgangers.

Probably not all in the same novel, but that would be pretty cool now that I think about it.

My themes

That said, I do have ideas and questions that I explore repeatedly, even when I’m not aware that’s where I’m headed. My characters ask questions like:

• Who am I?
• Where do I belong?
• How do I choose between belonging and being myself?
• When do I start getting it right?
• Who do I trust?
• What hill will I die on?

Even if I didn’t want it to, my indulgent novel would inevitably explore themes of identity, purpose, individuality and authenticity, spirituality, alienation, belonging, and sacrifice, wrapped up with more questions than answers. There’d be awkward sex, moral codes, casual violence, vengeance, loss, family secrets, love’s cruelty, passion for creation, and resistance and dignity in the face of life’s absurdity.

It would definitely mash up genres (SF, fantasy, horror, true crime, murder mystery, superhero, alternative history) and if I could work in an Excel spreadsheet, ice cream, and a dinosaur, I’d be in Heaven.

I could have titled this segment “Write Your Geekdom” but I didn’t want to give non-geeks the wrong idea.

But also, you’re a geek. Maybe you aren’t a traditional geek, immodestly obsessed with science fiction and fantasy books, films, and other paraphernalia, but you go hard for your hobbies, interests, and likes. You might be a sports or political geek, or a music or film geek. You might be a foodie or love gardening. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re pursuing some creative geekery.

Put simply, a geek is someone who loves what they love, passionately and unapologetically. And you must love something.

My favorite books are those in which the writers put it all on the page, not only their passions or deep background knowledge, but all the fringe elements and garnishes that make the work uniquely theirs, the kind of book that could not have been written by anyone but that single author.

I see a lot of this in comics, a form that lends itself to both geekdom and mashing up varied concepts. In the world of comics, writers have to be comfortable indulging their interests. It’s easier now that superhero film franchises make multi-millions at the box office, but still – the people who write and draw comics aren’t doing it for the money or prestige. No one is writing about superheroes with a Pulitzer in mind.

Side note: Of course, I’m referring to comic books, not comic strips. Charles Schulz, Bill Watterson, and Garry Trudeau did make tons of money and win prizes. But only the very luckiest and most popular of comic book writers and artists have that kind of breakthrough.

Aztec Ace; art by Dan Day

In a comic called Aztec Ace, writer Doug Moench created a comic that combined a vast range of interests: time travel, the Aztecs (naturally), Depression-era America, Sigmund Freud, comic books and pulp magazines, and philosophical paradoxes. The result is a compelling, intelligent, and yet action-packed science fiction/mystery adventure comic. It’s Dr. Who for conspiracy theorists, with gams and boobs. It’s astonishing how much detail Moench crammed into a single-issue script, and yet the comics never felt crowded or over-written.

Time2: The Epiphany by Howard Chaykin

In Time², writer/artist Howard Chaykin explored an other-world where time is experienced at a different level, and where demons, advanced robotics, and zombies co-exist. Film noir mobsters, city politics, urban renewal, Jazz-era New York, and sex collide in Chaykin’s most personal work. Chaykin has said he did not expect Time2 to find a large audience, either at the time of its creation or later. He proudly affirms that – damn the torpedoes – these stories were for him.

When he launched Time², Chaykin was coming off his very popular American Flagg! series, which itself was an amalgam of Chaykin’s interests in speculative fiction, late stage capitalism, pop culture, sex kinks, and soft-core porn, which formed the foundation for a series of stories that were part science fiction and part political thriller, with frequent interludes for quickie encounters between the protagonist and various side characters, and sometimes side characters with each other.

Your geekdom

Investigating your obsessions is a bit of a throwback to write what you know, but with the added spice of permission to indulge a niche interest. The best part? You can write about whatever you want. That’s always the best part of creative writing, but it’s especially true here.

If you are writing a blog or memoir, here is where you find topics. Do you want to write 1,000 words about an alien who appears on-screen for 8 seconds in the original Star Wars? Go for it! Do you have esoteric knowledge about some kind of craft or manufacturing, the natural world, politics, or pop culture? Break down what you know in ecstatic detail.

Pretend you’re writing for an audience that is as deeply invested as you are. No one will try to change the subject. No one will accuse you of hijacking the conversation. No one’s eyes will glaze over with disinterest. Picture your readers being enthralled by your nuggets of information and insight. If you choose the blog route, and if you are consistent and good, you will find those people. It may take time, but – as I often tell myself – you are not a unicorn. There are other people with your interests and they would like to know you.

If you are writing fiction, give your geekdoms to your characters. Why shouldn’t your police detective collect Star Wars action figures? Why can’t an attorney chase UFOs in her spare time? Why shouldn’t a construction worker follow the various threads of JFK assassination conspiracy theories?

Imagine a Tarantino film without a main character delivering an extended monologue about a piece of trivia, niche interest, or pet peeve. You probably can’t.

Speaking of which, pet peeves are another great obsession to explore. Mine include people who need to look at the menu at a fast food restaurant, drivers who repeatedly tap their breaks on the highway, and people who don’t pick up after their dogs. If I gave my pet peeves to a protagonist, I could fill half my word count with complaints.

If you’re willing to go deep with your weird obsessions, doling out hobbies like knitting, gardening, or cooking should be even easier. Let your characters be smart and a bit obsessive, but first, start with you. What grabs you?

Your themes

Hobbies and interests are merely the external interests that may obsess you.

As you write, you may find yourself returning to certain questions and ideas. The same situations and themes will bubble up again and again. You may sense some overriding emotions that surface no matter what you’re writing about.

You may come back to questions such as “Where do we come from?” or “Why are we here?” Depending on your writing, you might explore different phrasings of those questions or discover new answers. Perhaps you want to explore fear or the various ways humans find and express love.

As you progress in your writing, you may fear that you are repeating yourself. This may be true especially when you explore questions that don’t have an explicit answer, such as why people do evil things. However, don’t shy away from your big questions and ideas that fascinate you.

Anne Tyler has never tired of writing about suburban, middle class family life in Baltimore, Maryland, but while her stories may feel familiar, she does not repeat herself. Steven Spielberg explores his sense of wonder in the universe, including the concept that humans on Earth are not alone. Martin Scorsese returns again and again to the nature of violence, often in films about the mob, but not only there.

What questions do you have about life or human nature? What themes would you like to explore? If you’re not sure where to start, consider the books, film, and television shows you enjoy watching. What do they have in common? What questions do they ask?

As with all our topics, start simply. Once you begin, find areas that intrigue you and go deeper. Trust yourself and trust the writing. Keep exploring.