Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books

Obviously Traveled?

Obviously Traveled?

I have obviously traveled.

But good-grief is traveling expensive.

It changes, I suppose when your parents pay for it all to when you are opening your own wallet.

“Six days in San Diego is how much?!”

And: “What did you say a flight to London costs?”

I have pointed out this excerpt once before – you can find it listed as one of my favorite quotes in the title linked below.

But I saw it again and felt it entitled to its own post.

On a side note – I can’t wait to go to Tel Aviv one day.

“Sometimes people ask me why I travel so much, and specifically why we travel with Henry so often. I think they think it’s easier to keep the kids at home, in their routines, surrounded by their stuff. It is. But we travel because it’s there. Because Capri exists and Kenya exists and Tel Aviv exists, and I want to taste every bite of it. We travel because I want my kids to learn, as I learned, that there are a million ways to live, a million ways to eat, a million ways to dress and speak and view the world. I want them to know that “our way” isn’t the right way, but just one way, that children all over the world, no matter how different they seem, are just like the children in our neighborhood—they love to play, to discover, to learn. I want my kids to learn firsthand and up close that different isn’t bad, but instead that different is exciting and wonderful and worth taking the time to understand. I want them to see themselves as bit players in a huge, sweeping, beautiful play, not as the main characters in the drama of our living room. I want my kids to taste and smell and experience the biggest possible world, because every bite of it, every taste and texture and flavor, is delicious.”

–Shauna Niequist, Bread And Wine

Does Writing Require Experience?

Does Writing Require Experience?

I say you have to know something before you can write about it.

Right?

I mean:

  • Travel – then you can write about travel.
  • Sail – then you can write about the ocean.
  • Suffer – then you can write about suffering.
  • Study economics – then you can write about economics.
  • Live in Saudi Arabia – then you can write about living in Saudi Arabia.
You need experience before you can write.Maybe not?

Donald Miller has forgotten more about writing than I have ever learned, and he says:

“A LOT OF people think a writer has to live in order to write, has to meet people and have a rich series of experiences or his work will become dull. But that is drivel. It’s an excuse a writer uses to take the day off, or the week or the month off for that matter. The thinking is, if we go play Frisbee in the park we’re going to have a thousand words busting out of us when we get back to the house. We’re going to write all kinds of beautiful prose about playing Frisbee. It’s never worked for me. Annie Dillard, who won the Pulitzer while still in her mother’s womb, wrote one of her books in a concrete cell. She says most of what a writer needs to really live they can find in a book. People who live good stories are too busy to write about them. Nobody ever strapped a typewriter to the back of an elephant and wrote a novel while hunting wild game. Nobody except for Hemmingway. But let’s not talk about Hemmingway.”

–Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years