Experience By Michael E. Gonzales

I started writing a new story that takes place back in 1899, and not because I’m infatuated with 1899 but because it places by characters in the time I need them in to match both historical events and events as written by another, and very famous, writer of science fiction from the genre’s early beginnings.

Next, I have to get them to a very specific location. This will by necessity require me to write about travel. I’m fortunate in that in my life I have traveled a great deal. This provides me some insight. And better yet I have traveled on a ship, which if your traveling about the world in 1899 there is pretty much only horses, trains, and ships to get around on (there were a few automobiles but very, very few).

My characters will have to traverse rugged mountainous terrain as well and dense forests in rolling hills. Yup, you guessed it…I’ve been there, done that.

“Okay, Mike, nuf bragg’n what’s yer point?”

Point is, every writer must draw on what they know and what they have experienced. Does this mean if you haven’t walked twenty-five miles in a day through a forest where the temperature is twenty-two degrees that you can’t write about it? Well, of course not.

First, what I do, is remember a time when I was once bone tired but knew I had to push on. After a hard day at the office ya got one last stop at the store, drag yourself through the isles to get what you need to go home and cook dinner!

Remember when you were last out in very cold weather for a longish time, remember shivering against the cold, pulling your collar up, burying your hand deep in your pockets.

Remember strolling through a fairy tale forest (or seeing a movie set in a fairy tale forest).

Next, I roll up all those memories, extrapolate (a highfalutin word meaning to deduce or guess) and then, here’s the hard part, see yourself dead tired in a freezing wood with miles to go before you sleep.

Again, I realize I’m preaching to the choir here and I know that very likely every one of you has a different method to achieve this same goal. And I am also aware that there are some of you who when describing walking dead tired in a freezing wood with miles of path ahead―have actually done that (you poor thing, you!).

It can be even more difficult if your having to describe events on an alien world, or in the weightless environment of space (and no, I’ve not been into space―yet).

It’s been said countless time, “there is no substitute for experience,” and that is so true, particularly for writers. The big difference is that for everyone else experience is something to draw on to improve some aspect of your life, but a writer has to have the ability to describe that experience in the most vivid and emotional manner possible.

You write about the death of a beloved character in your story. As painful as it might be, recall the death of a friend, a parent, a loved one. Bring up all the pain that you spent years suppressing and pour your tears onto the page. Hold nothing back.

If it doesn’t make you cry, neither will it your reader.

One of the most difficult things I have experienced about writing is the pain of vomiting up old memories, and the struggle to put that pain on paper.

If done well, you will know the joy of having written something people, hopefully, will want to read while at the same time experiencing your own cathartic event.
                                   Just keep writing! 

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