Everyone has different methods to help get the juices flowing for a story or to fuel the motivation to even get one down on paper. There’s blogs and articles that offer up full lists of activities, thinking exercises, and ideas, some people like getting together a playlist, and some prefer to step away for a while and not force it. For me, the greatest injection of inspiration comes from traveling.
Going on a road trip with Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” playing on repeat really makes me feel like a wandering beatnik sometimes. Pair that with bad gas station coffee, minor inconveniences, not knowing where the heck you are, the odd groups of people you often meet at various stops, and you really start to romanticize the starving artist stories that make up many of the literary shifts in history. Sure, it won’t make you great, but it makes you feel like you can be and that’s a pretty good feeling haha.
I love road trips. Nothing makes you think differently more than being in a different place, standing somewhere new that you’ve never been before, and experiencing something out of the ordinary. Nothing in this world makes me more energetic, makes me feel more alive, than traveling. The first time I went to New Orleans and heard music in the streets and saw a wild crowd surrounding a tap dancer jazzing it out in the French Quarter. When I drove through Texas and stopped to see the grave of Clyde Barrow and got a tour of the wildflower filled Western Heights Cemetery from a friendly groundskeeper who told stories about some of the other unique “residents”. When I went to New Mexico and stood in the desert to listen to the silence that stretched for miles and miles. There’s truly something magical about the desert. The Greek corner of St. Augustine that came out of nowhere and choked me on coffee I wasn’t prepared for, or the colorfully rundown streets of St. Petersburg dotted with haunted bookstores where I got lost for a good two hours before accidentally running into the historical Flamingos Bar where a picture of Jack Kerouac was staring at me from the wall.
When I was a kid, my family used to take my trips to Tennessee and for years those trips would fuel my writing. Many of my stories happen to be set in some sort of forest location despite growing up near the canals of Cape Coral, Florida. I’m someone built for travel, I got the travel bug, the itch to get on the road. So, it makes sense that getting on the movie will alight me with excitement, however, even if you’re not someone with such an itch, I still recommend giving it a try. Writers are often told that, frankly dull, piece of advice to “write what you know.” It’s good advice but it can also be stifling. Most of us only really know the world we grew up in and never leave, films and books, interactions with people from other places can help expand that a bit but it’s not the same as going out and seeing it all for yourself. If you never experience anything but your own bubble, there’s a chance that the well where you brew your stories may never grow or in some cases, may even sour.
Rachel Roth
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