Take Chances! Make Mistakes! Get Messy!

So I spent the last few days trying to figure out how to follow up my last post. Lists are wonderful things, and I've tried to give myself a guideline (I won't call it a rule because I break it a lot) that every new thing I write should be better than the last.

Ladies and gentlemen, I was stumped.

I was dry for words, lost, completely blank. "Writer's block" doesn't quite cover it; I felt like a lack of voice was closing in on me, suffocating me. I could barely think, let alone put my fingers to the keyboard. I panicked. I shut down the computer, and then I shut down myself.

And the next day, I went to the park with a few of my cousins and ran around for half an hour. We climbed on the jungle gyms and chased each other, playing some sort of tag with no rules. We laughed and fell over each other and I realized that I didn't feel stifled anymore. In fact, I was already beginning to compose something new.

Writers are often very introverted, sedentary people. We tend not only to keep to ourselves, but keep others at arm's length. We claim it's all because we need to be alone to write, we need quiet, we can't let other people distract us, et cetera.  And then, after we have spent five days alone in our house with no outside contact and a half finished document staring at us with almost malicious intent, we're surprised when suddenly we run out of things to say.

Romance writers often have a dozen failed relationships behind them. Novels that take place in another country are often written by someone who has either heavily researched or has actually been to that country. Obviously, fantasy and sci-fi writers don't actually experience the strange otherworldly things that they write about, but there is always a thread of truth throughout the entire story of real events.

My point is this: To be a writer, you need something to write about. To have something to write about, you need to go experience new things. Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!

... Well, you know what I mean. Try new things, guys! Why do you think the Travel channel has so many shows about people running around different countries and sampling the local cuisine? People are intensely interested in all the things they don't know, especially the things they don't know that they don't know.

After all, if a simple trip to the park gave me the idea for this blog entry, imagine what more could do for you.