Being an author scratches my creative itch, sure. But I was recently hit with two specific reasons I love it.
1. I look forward to getting older.
Aging? Gasp. Yes!
Because it is through growing older—having more life experiences—that I will have more authentic stories to write. It is the stories woven with direct experience, whether I write fiction or non-fiction, that spill from me the easiest, the fastest.
2. It makes me super adventurous!
I want to taste, try, explore everything, so I can write a character who will do it, or a scene where I can describe every aspect of it, and not because I read about it online, but because I actually did it myself.
For example, I used to say I’d never learn to surf because of sharks, cracking my head open on coral, etc. But you know what? I want to do it now. And I want to cook octopus so I can properly write about a character doing it. I want to try strange foods, whether they’re awful, disgusting or pure ambrosia, tasting, feeling, and smelling them. I want to go to places all over the world, even if they’re bug-infested (Amazon, anyone?) to accurately write about them, allowing my reader to also feel like they’ve been there!
The places that might have scared me previously? I now look at them with wildly excited eyes.
And it’s not just having these explorations in isolation. Oh no… it’s the synergy of combining them, spinning them every which way—together—that makes for even more memorable tales.
It’s weaving a blanket, with threads of different colors, textures, and feels(!), taken from different life experiences and times, so when it’s interlaced, crisscrossed, it forms a whole story, complete, and unique in only the way it can be.
