When to Steal

This is not about plagiarism. That kind of stealing is never cool. If you do it, you deserve a fate worse than death. Something really horrible, like having to spend eternity in the waiting room of a clinic in Hialeah where the old ladies complain about their aches and pains and how little their social insecurity checks are.

This is about stealing experiences. Hemingway said that you had to really know a thing to write about it. He was right - for himself. Tell that to Tolkien or Lewis or to George Lucas. These men created new worlds that simply didn't exist. Worlds they only knew inside their heads.

How can a man write about the experiences of a woman? How can a woman write a man? By learning. And how do we learn? By paying attention. There are seven billion people on this planet and every one of them is having an experience every moment. I am experiencing the writing of this blog post. You are suffering through the experience of reading it. So, let's do a little exercise...

What am I wearing?
Where am I sitting?
Is it day or night?
Am I showered and shaved?
Do I have a cup of coffee or a glass of whisky nearby?

I don't care about your answers anymore than you should care about the correct answers. You decide what I'm wearing, what I'm drinking. You decide everything about it. Steal the experience of me writing this and make it your own. Steal it as you would steal the experience of a cop chasing a bad guy or a caveman hunting a woolly mammoth.

You don't need to experience all there is to experience in order to be a writer. Imagination trumps all.





Adolfo Jimenez is a writer living against his will in Hollywood, Florida.  His latest release is Scenes from a 1979 Ford Fairmont, a short book of poems. Get it on Amazon!

Check him out here!