It Starts Somewhere

Every piece of writing begins a small seed, an idea, an inkling.

It is essential we live in a state of wonder. It is essential we are in love with world while we are also everything else. It is the best advice, we think, to remind ourselves that we should write about what we find interesting, not what we believe others might find interesting. It is this impulse that guides the evolution of travel writing we are fostering in our new Conscious Travel Writing workshop.

Write what is interesting to you. This is a universal truth to writing no matter what you are working on. It transcends genre and time and deadlines. Yet it can take us years to learn this. We write what we are assigned, what is popular, what we believe others want to read. But, our writing only turns into our writing when we learn to listen to our internal compass of what we are attracted to.

The secret is this, what we are attracted to creates an internal energy, this energy creates empathy and magnetic language. There is a tuning fork inside each one of us that when you learn to listen will tell you where your story is. It will change the way you experience the world. And it should.

So, start a list. Start a running list of the things you find interesting, strange, marvelous, horrible: the things that stick with you, linger on the edge of your imagination, and keep you up at night. A list of the gorgeous and the horrible, might be the best way to say it. Here are some of ours:

A dead deer in a river.
An old man waiting for a piece of mail.
The recipe for plum jam.
The smell of dry wall.
Slot machines all ring in the key of C.
An empty train car early in the morning.
The sound of a couple arguing outside my window.

Start your own list today…