All told, I've driven the highways and byways of thirty-five states. I've driven through towering trees in Oregon and woken to towering rocks in Arizona. I've stopped dead in traffic on the George Washington Bridge going into New York and on I-5 going into Los Angeles. I've made the drive from Denver to Boston, thirty-four hours in total, in two days. I've eaten smoked salmon in Washington, boiled crawfish in Alabama, and factory fresh chocolate in Pennsylvania. I've driven through rains in Oklahoma that were so heavy I couldn't see more than ten yards ahead of my bumper just so I could get Steak 'n Shake one last time before heading home to Colorado.
These are the stories I like to tell. Stories of travel, and learning, and growth. In fact, many of these are the stories I will tell in my upcoming book, Chasing Butterflies. Because I like writing them so much, I often find myself formulating the story while I'm still traveling. Sometimes I'll start narrating my own life in my head as if to compare the actual events with the story I'll present my reader. More commonly though, I feel a tug to detach myself from the situation entirely so that I can go off and record everything in a journal. Twice I've actually tried to journal while on a trip. The first time was while I traveled south through central California with two of my very best friends from college. The second was on a couples trip north to Wyoming with my wife and our friends on our way to see a total solar eclipse. Both times I came to regret it.
What I've come to realize is that in order to tell a story well you must first experience it wholly. That could be literally, as in the case of my travel tales. In order to have experiences with sharing, I need to commit myself to them and be present mentally and emotionally for the entire journey. That could also be figurative though. If you're writing a work of fiction, still take the time to play the events out in your imagination. Place yourself in the scene. Look around. Don't just focus on what your characters are doing. Peak down alleyways to see what may be happening just beneath the surface of your tale. The process of writing narrows your focus and removes you from the larger events at play. Allow yourself to experience first, then allot yourself time to write it all down later.