Writing in the Wild

Posted by Guest Writer in WBN News & Events      6 comments

Feb
23

By Christopher Savage

Hey, guys, just to start: where’s the strangest place you’ve ever written? It’s always been a pleasure of mine to bring the old laptop around to tiny, out-of-the-way places, parks, or plazas, and try to get inspired by the sheer randomness of whatever’s around. You can get really great found poems this way (but found poems by way of dumpster doors, lost dog collars in a meadow, floating shoes passing beneath a bridge, etc.). The idea is to get out of the familiar, shock the system, give it something new to spark some passion and inspiration. And who even needs the damned laptop? Just a pad of paper–do it Impressionistic style–and away you go.

Examples of places I’ve gone: a crap motel room with a typewriter; a theater ticket booth in high school; the Town Lake trail after running for twenty minutes; a random neighbor’s abandoned town home; the 13th floor of the W Hotel; this blog.

There is a wilderness spirit that permeates brand new environments. It’s a great privilege to harness this spirit and integrate it into one’s own writing style. The kinetic energy of busy places and the somber tone of silent ones are equally affecting; they can bring out something unexpected and widen the exposure to stimuli vital to a writer’s acumen.

But let’s go back to the beginning. How about it, guys? Strange places you’ve ventured to with literate intentions? How about on the back of a goat? A monster truck rally? On the bottom floor of a wig factory? Hopefully someplace even stranger.

Christopher Savage is a writer living in Austin. He writes poetry, short stories, non-fiction, film scripts, comic books, and one long novel, among other things. He is the founder of the Boho Coco literary zine and blog and is currently attending UT Austin as a Sociology major, English minor. He is survived by his cat Cashew.