Write with Me

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.

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.

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.

I hope a beginner or frustrated non-beginner might benefit from this series of posts about getting started as a writer, but I am also doing this for myself.

Today, I have more ideas than I could possibly turn into stories before I croak. I also aspire to say something through those ideas and stories and, regardless of any eventual readership, it’s important for me to do so. I write for me. Anyone else is a bonus reader.

In my younger days, I was not so confident or self-contained. I struggled with what to say and how to say it. I had ideas for stories, many of them slightly used, and because they were borrowed, they didn’t inspire any great writing. My unique experiences – family, school, growing up – felt boring and meaningless. The parts that might have made for good dramatic fiction were too difficult to write about.

I didn’t have a voice. Or rather, I had a voice, but I hated it and was certain other people would hate it too. I had not lived any kind of exciting life. In fact, I’d describe my childhood as cloistered, bordering on suffocating. I grew up in a religious culture that romanticized journal writing and I tried once or twice to keep one, but the very few entries I managed ran no longer than two dozen words and were limited to details like Went to school today. Had a math quiz. I bored even myself. And if the occasional high-emotion moment did occur at school, it was of the type I did not wish to recall, especially for future generations.

College opened my horizons exponentially, but I still found no connection between the authors I now loved and the life I’d lived up to then. I was no great existentialist thinker or Czech absurdist dying of consumption. I had not lived through either World War or even Viet Nam. I had no great insights about being gay in the middle of the AIDS crisis, and I was gay in the middle of the AIDS crisis. I saw no link between the creative work I loved and what I knew. I had nothing to say about anything important. There was only one course of action.

I had to become someone else.

This was wrong. Not only was that not the only course of action, it was the completely wrong course of action. Every time I thought I moved forward in my writing, I actually went backwards. Every time I learned something new about craft, I knew less about myself. I avoided being who I was, which made it impossible for me to become the person I could be.

Today, that high school or college kid might read my writing and think I’m doing pretty well. And I am. But old me looks back at those boys and wishes I could tell them they are important. That they don’t have to pretend to be someone else or hide any part of themselves to be loved.

I’d tell them to write like no one will read it, because that’s the truth. I’d explain that maybe life is shitty and confusing, but it’s still ok to write about it, along with any hurtful or humiliating things people have done, and in fact, writing is your best path towards healing and understanding. Anne Lamott famously said that if people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better. This applies to you to. It’s ok to write about the days when you weren’t doing your best.

I’d like to tell them that what they say is original because it’s theirs, unique because it is theirs, and that no one else will ever be able to say exactly what they say in the way they say it, and that is enough. That is all they need. I would beg them to not waste their time trying to be anyone but themselves, because that is who they are going to be eventually anyway.

But I can’t go back there, so I’m going to tell you.

Ground Rules

I hate giving advice I don’t follow, so I will write with you as we go.

As I point you to places where you might find your raw material, I’ll share some of mine. If I suggest a writing prompt that might help you get started writing, I will try the same trick and post my results. When I talk about the roadblocks and pitfalls, I’ll tell you about the times I ran head-first into them.

The writing life ain’t all cakes and cream. I find it helpful to know that other people hit hard times, and I think you will too.

For the next few months, I’m going to talk about writing, specifically the foundational step of starting to write. You have the desire, but now what? What should I write about? Where do ideas come from? Many writers wrestle with these questions without realizing they already have the answers, if they simply knew where to look for them. I struggled with them, and since I’m not a unicorn, I assume there are more of you out there with the same conundrum.

Where do we find inspiration? In the traditional workshop setting, writers are taught to look for ideas outside themselves or externally. You might have been given writing prompts or told that story ideas can be found in the local Sunday newspaper. When you found none, you might have thrown the paper down in disgust and vowed to move to another, more interesting city. You might have been inspired by a book or film, or been tempted to steal a juicy story that happened to someone else. This might have worked, but more often it didn’t.

For every borrowed idea that succeeds, you will have at least 25 that are weak, uninspired, or derivative, because the idea itself is external to you. Put another way, you found the idea, but it didn’t come from you.

The problem is that we are taught the idea will present itself, so we expect to see the neon arrow pointing at the Great Idea. Sometimes, you may spot an idea in the wild, and please use whatever material you find this way, but it won’t happen often. And when it doesn’t, we feel deficient. Our gurus told us that ideas are everywhere, so there must be something wrong with our brains. Maybe we’re not up to the job.

I argue – and wish I had known – that the best ideas, the stories that drive you, that you must write, come from within. They are internal. And when we can’t find any, that’s still where we need to look, only more deeply and thoroughly. That’s where the obstacle hides.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott wrote “Anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life.” I didn’t believe that when I read it for the first time 30+ years ago. With added mileage and context, I believe it now. You have more material in your head than you will be able to write in your lifetime, if only you could identify it as material.

Through the rest of this blog series, I’m not going to talk about writing stories or even generating story ideas, but on discovering your base raw material. That might sound like three words for the same thing, but it’s not. Crafting premises and transforming them into a story are actually entirely different topics.

Instead, I’ll suggest places to look for your raw material and exercises to help you dig for it. Occasionally, I will write with you, to demonstrate my thoughts in action. By sharing what I know, I hope I can help you cut down on that 30+ year learning curve.

And maybe, you’ll find your own ideas and some stories worth telling.

Who am I writing for?

I’m writing for anyone who wonders how to get started or even to feel inspired, more connected to their writing and their voice, regardless of your age or writing experience. We all have to start somewhere, and while a lot of us start in our youth, I know many writers who came to it in their second or third act.

Longtime writers who feel uninspired or disconnected from their work may also find something of value. When you feel lost, sometimes the best place to look is inside.

If you don’t believe you already have enough material for the rest of your life, or believe your thoughts are mediocre or dull, or believe no one would be interested in your voice, I’m writing with you in mind and I would like to say: You do. They aren’t. We are.

This is what I wish I’d known.

Ground Rules

Before we begin, let’s set some ground rules and also let’s make this as painless as possible by setting only one rule, the only one you absolutely must follow.

You must write.

That’s it. The #1 (and Only) Rule of Writing is that you must do it. It’s not enough to want to do it, think about doing it, or complain about doing it. You must sit still and engage in the physical act of writing.

That’s it. That’s all the rules.

As you study, you will read a lot of advice camouflaged as rules. Some of this advice is very good, but much of it is based on the preferences of the person sharing it. Even if you find that 10 out of 10 writers agree that a piece of advice is very, very good, so good in fact that it should be a rule chipped into stone, you will also find a separate cadre of creative people who do not abide by this advice and have written successfully while ignoring it.

Every writer – every writer – has their own approach to creativity and the work they produce. There is no single correct way to explore or express your creativity. Eight billion people on this planet have the capacity for creative expression and each of us goes about it differently.

I wish someone had told me that.

I will argue that it’s important to understand the rules of writing, including how they work and why we have them, so that you can break them intelligently and with flair, but none of them are inviolate.

Except for Rule #1. You don’t have to publish, you don’t have to show it to anyone. It doesn’t even have to be good writing, not yet. But you must put it down.

Seriously. This is all you have to do.

Caveat

As with any writing about the craft of writing, your mileage may vary. Not all advice works for every writer or for every story. Engage with the content and material in any way that makes the most sense for you. If a suggestion is not relevant to your creative work or doesn’t jibe with your vision, ignore it.

In the interest of brevity, I will phrase my observations and advice with direct statements. Please accept all of my statements as opinion, even where they don’t begin with “In my opinion…”

Now let’s write.

We are almost midway through 2026 so this is a good time for a reintroduction. For those joining the blog in progress, I am Will.

Over the years, I’ve written a little bit of everything – short stories, plays, poems, journalism, a few novels. I’ve been blogging regularly since 2023, the year I recklessly challenged myself to post something every day for a full year, simply to see if I could do it. I did. I’ve scaled back, but the forced compliance with daily posting helped me develop confidence, topics, and a voice. I wouldn’t do it again anytime soon, but my Blog Year was a sharp turn in my writing road. I was doing it for me, and that was important.

Over that time, my writing improved. I write faster, with more surety. I’ve shored up some of my weak spots and have a better eye for my flaws. I have a stronger grasp on what I want to say and feel confident that it’s worth saying. I feel I have something to contribute, which is new for me.

But with this growth has come regret. There are writing concepts – particularly around the art of writing, theme, and voice – that I wish I’d understood when I was younger. I wasted a lot of time feeling like I didn’t have anything to say, that I hadn’t any original or even interesting thoughts. I wondered how some writers seemed to have high concept ideas spilling out of their fingertips, when every story I wrote felt trite or went nowhere. I believed my life itself was boring, that I needed some grand experience or learned wisdom before I could create something worthwhile. I thought I needed to sound like Someone, with a capital S. That particular Someone was not me and yet all the other Someones I tried to be did not fit. I wanted so badly to write something great, but felt I had nothing to work with.

I know better now. I’m a stronger writer today because I have written a few million words and because I continue studying and practicing craft. Craft takes time, and you never stop learning.

But it should not have taken me all those years to understand that life had already given me everything I needed for the art of writing, the answer to the question of what to write about and why and why it’s important and what that should sound like. I had it already when I was 20 but I didn’t know that I did.

As I’ve devoted more time to my creative work these last few years, I haven’t discovered anything new but I’ve learned to recognize what I already have, all the experiences and emotions I believed were inconsequential. I’ve learned to trust those experiences. I have learned to love them, even the parts that are shameful or sad, which are the parts that need our love most of all. I hope that what I write might entertain or move or comfort or inspire someone, but even if it doesn’t, it’s still worth the writing. Even if I’m my only reader, it’s worth it.

I wish I had realized I had all this when I was younger. I wish someone had taught me how to see it. I wish my books and teachers had spent some time on the writer, and not merely on the writing.

And it occurred to me: Maybe someone else would be interested in hearing what I’ve learned. Perhaps there are other young – or not young – writers who would benefit from having this conversation now, instead of waiting ten or twenty or forty years for the realization to arrive.

Maybe I should write this down.

So next week, we begin.

Write with me.