Orwell himself couldn't have done it better. Though he did write superbly about India and other places where he spent time among the locals. The key, apart from being an excellent wordsmith, is in the details: the Snapple mouthwash at the end of the world, that the only restaurant's only two wines were boxed - and their young waitress mispronounced the names, but most telling, her town was so small and isolated that she was related to one third of her highschool class.
These are the lived details that give truth (and beauty) to writing. The things your very first writing teacher meant when instructing, "Write what you know." At some point you understand that what you "know" are the memories that pop up as if on a video screen, people and their words and locations that were burned into your longterm memory. Sometimes you recall the reason, but often they just appear without any clear inspirational prompt. But prompts lurk everywhere in your environment, not the least in reading others' good writing. Peter Imber writes that way. Read him for inspiration.
Orwell himself couldn't have done it better. Though he did write superbly about India and other places where he spent time among the locals. The key, apart from being an excellent wordsmith, is in the details: the Snapple mouthwash at the end of the world, that the only restaurant's only two wines were boxed - and their young waitress mispronounced the names, but most telling, her town was so small and isolated that she was related to one third of her highschool class.
These are the lived details that give truth (and beauty) to writing. The things your very first writing teacher meant when instructing, "Write what you know." At some point you understand that what you "know" are the memories that pop up as if on a video screen, people and their words and locations that were burned into your longterm memory. Sometimes you recall the reason, but often they just appear without any clear inspirational prompt. But prompts lurk everywhere in your environment, not the least in reading others' good writing. Peter Imber writes that way. Read him for inspiration.