By Kevin S. Giles

Did you know most of you are writers? Potentially writers, at least?

(And no, I’m not your long-ago English teacher coming to haunt you, so relax.)

Writing doesn’t require any qualifications, certifications, degrees or pedigrees.

But life experience? Yes.

Who doesn’t have life experience? It’s the cornerstone of all writing. For purposes of example, let me take you back to English class (painful as this journey might be) for just a moment.

Here are some examples:

If you read Call of the Wild by Jack London, you might know that he spent a year in Yukon, Canada, during the Klondike Gold Rush.

If you read Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, you might know that he drew on his knowledge of Dust Bowl migration.

Red Maguire, newspaper crime fighter, investigates a string of odd murders in Montana in 1954.

If you read any Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling, you might know she was essentially penniless when, waiting for a delayed train, she conceived a story idea about a young boy attending a school of wizardry.

If you read A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, you might know he was an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I.

If you read anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Great Gatsby, perhaps), you might know that his fictional scenes closely resembled the cultural society of his wealthy Summit Hill neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota.

If you read novels by the American Indian writer Louise Erdrich (Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, The Night Watchman, others), you might know she is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

Trying writing like this

If you read any of the dozens of novels by Stephen King, you might know that he started reading horror comics when he was a boy and wrote his first published novel, Carrie, on a typewriter balanced on his knees.

If you read anything by romance author Judith Krantz, you might know she started writing at age 50 and, after becoming famous, publicly admitted her distress that she was unpopular as a child.

If you read Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, you might know the author never witnessed a Civil War battle.

Wait a minute!

Yes, I tricked you with that last example.

Imagination, as Crane so deftly demonstrated, is another pillar of writing. I’ll bet you have imagination. Everybody does.

My point is that all the authors I mentioned here came from ordinary backgrounds. Some were broke but wrote anyway. Others toiled away as laborers, homemakers, clerks and lifeguards. The prolific legal thriller author, John Grisham, was a farm boy who as a teenager earned $1 an hour watering bushes at a nursery.

Not to imply that my body of work compares with the esteemed legion of famous authors listed above, but I do bring my own brand of practical experience.

Being in touch with real life

I worked as a summer custodian at the school district. I clocked in as a laborer at a sawmill where I dug sawdust and carried logs for eight hours straight. I worked in carpentry and in a railroad roundhouse (graveyard shift) as an (apprentice) machinist. I operated heavy equipment at a sand and gravel pit. I drove a dump truck, peddled newspapers and sorted books in a library. My first full-time job in journalism was in Australia where the phrase “foreign to me” took on literal meaning. Over my ensuing long newspaper career I interviewed lumberjacks, murderers, senators, cops, tornado victims, environmentalists, movie actors, prosecutors, mayors, artists, prison wardens and prison inmates, medical doctors, teachers, Iranian-American cab drivers, parents of slain children, and wrote about my encounter with the famous World War II general Omar Bradley. And — I interviewed thousands more people of every description and interest over the years. I learned from all of them. I couldn’t write factual news stories without thoroughly understanding the material — and verifying that I accurately quoted all those sources.

Writers learn to observe

Each of you has many experiences of your own that differ from mine. Every experience is a story waiting for an audience. What most of us come around to realizing, eventually, is that we don’t need a fancy resume to write good stories. Or, for that matter, to live a good life. Writers learn to observe, to develop an ear for how people talk, to walk in the shoes of the characters in their stories.

Can you do it? Sure you can.

Sampling life is a critical foundation for writing. You have experience. Yes you do.

Now, write!

Find Kevin's books on Amazon (and leave a review, please!)

Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.