Live first, then write

Live a large and active life. Meet different kinds of people. Put yourself in unfamiliar situations. Expose yourself to diverse experiences that challenge you. All of this will make your writing more interesting.

Thrity Umrigar

Thrity Umrigar

The above advice for would-be writers, found at the end of the paperback edition of Thrity Umrigar's novel The Space Between Us, is something you don't find in most books for writers, yet it strikes me as very wise and sensible. Writers need something to write about, preferably something original and creative, and that can be hard to find when sitting all day behind a desk or writing table. One needs to experience the world before trying to write about it.

Many writers tend to be introverts who are perfectly content spending their days alone writing or, for a break, reading. Yet novelists need to actually listen to the voices of real people talking before they invent dialogue. They need to see places and things before describing them. Not everyone talks like newscasters, announcers and actors on television. Not everyone says the same things or believes the same things. Fiction, even science fiction or fantasy, needs to be based to some extent on reality.

Those who write nonfiction need even more to experience the real world. One of the more valid criticisms of national media is that reporters and commentators tend to interview only those people who think the same way they do, ignoring anyone with a different point of view. Their writing suffers as a result.

Beginning writers usually can't make a living from their writing, which can actually be an advantage. It forces them to work at another job, which usually means getting out and encountering other people. Full-time writers can afford to sit and write all day, but the best of them don't do that. They write for perhaps half a day, usually mornings, then spend the rest of their days living a more normal life. Those who write on historical topics may be able to afford to spend their days in an enclosed space, but most writers benefit from getting out with other people.

Elizabeth George, the mystery writer, lives in the United States but sets her fiction in England. She has said she likes to begin a writing project by going to England, seeing different locales (locating a good spot to discover a body, for example) and listening to people talk. Only then does she discover her story. Other writers invent the story first, then do the research. Either way it seems important to get out from behind that keyboard and experience life.