The Writer Needs Adventure

You can't write meaningful things without meaningful experiences

Saint Jerome in His Study, Albrecht Dürer, 1514

A couple months ago, my cousin visited me in Austin. We feasted like kings, enjoyed live music, went to a Christian mass at a megachurch, hung out at a new coffee shop, hit up the gym, got work done at the office, and even took a ride in a self-driving car.

He arrived Friday night and left Monday night, and during that span I didn’t write much in my journal. This is an interesting observation to me because I’ve noticed that sometimes, the more fun things that are going on in my life, the less I pick up the pen.

This pattern isn’t new.

For example, in college, when my friends and I went on spring break in the Bahamas, I didn’t even bother bringing my journal. I knew I would be too busy sipping rum out of coconuts and laughing my stomach into a state of pain to take the time to scribble in solitude.

Now, to risk stating the obvious, I’m not making the case against writing. Writing is infinitely valuable and a source of great meaning. But it is worth noting that exciting things going on tend to be correlated with less writing.

Which is why I now think you actually need periods like this to even have something to commit to paper.

It’s like yes, to write, you need to read all the time and dedicate hours to doing the thing in solitude. But you also need to wrestle with tigers and go on side quests and get yourself in and out of sticky situations.

You need to learn human nature not from science books but from gambling on the streets.

You need to learn courage not from writing about great people but from taking risks in the real world yourself.

You need to learn camaraderie not from listening to podcasts about sports and war but from competing in something with your own band of brothers.

You need to live.

Recall that classic quote from Thoreau: “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” It seems to me that sometimes the best thing you can do for your writing is have periods in which you have too much going on to even write at all. That way, when you do sit down with the keyboard, the words pour out of you naturally, like waves rolling in with the tide.