Someone recently complimented me on my ability to write description, which honestly was such a validating comment because it’s something I’ve worked really hard on. I would read other writers all the time and think, “I wish I could describe things as well as they do.” In my self-critical pattern, I also feel like I still have a ways to go, but I do have some processes that have certainly helped me along the way.

I was recently in Kingston, Jamaica for the very first time and if there is one thing that inspires me to write, it’s travel. I don’t know what it is about it, but being in a new space, smelling a different kind of air, eating great food, does a lot for my pen game. This revitalizing energy has to be captured and so I try to make it a point to ensure that I’m writing everything down that I can at the moment.

Now, it’s obnoxious how many books I travel with. This time around I had my planner, two books, a novel and a nonfiction book, and my journal. The last trip I took without my journal, I instantly regretted it so I had to add that back into the fold. I absolutely love to journal when I’m in a different city.

The crux of it is that I will write all the things I see, feel, things I hear. It is an overflowing well to be able to pull from when you actually sit down to write. So often writers ask about writer’s block and truth be told, when you’re writing all the time, you can typically excavate your notes and find something. Something that will take you back to the moment and mining that work has been so rich in my experience.

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves when it comes to journaling, but what’s easier than writing what is there? Here is are two examples of passages from my journal on my most recent trip:

Excerpt 1

There is beauty here. A place I’m sure riddled with its own trouble but very Black, very familiar, even though I’ve never been. Black people are home. No matter how diligently they worked to divide us, our culture is way too strong. Through different dialects and vast oceans, Black people will always be home.

Excerpt 2

We went from the Chairman’s dinner to club hoppin’ in the heart of the city. To Jangas where the entryway was gravel and the bar sat under a massive tree weaved through the structure. Armed guards smiled at our group as we ordered bottles of alcohol to make our own drinks. There is a way about Jamaican men. A smoothness. A machismo. A desire.

After attending the Torch Literary Arts retreat last year, I thought a lot about archives. Someone recently talked about how instrumental our generation will be in that process because of our interesting placement in time. We grew up where disposable cameras were still a thing. Where we took our used film to the pharmacy and waited for the call to pick up our prints. There is nostalgia in archiving for us, quite differently than the later generations that came after us.

This type of journaling is my archive. Both for my own personal memories, I want to be able to go back and know exactly what it felt like to be in Kingston, but also for my work. I can pull pieces of my writing like old designer dresses. Sentences that waited for their perfect moment to be inserted into a story. A vibrant color that I get to place into a new painting creating a whole new work of art in itself. These pieces that we write can come together like patches on a quilt.

Collecting experiences, writing the details is part of the work we do off the page of a particular project. I say a lot that I’m writing all the time. I may not know exactly where something may end up, but I am always writing.

To be a great writer is to observe. To be able to see the things that others don’t and then be able to convert them into the words that others can never seem to find so that when they read about a random Wednesday night in Jamaica, they can point to it and say, I know that, but have never been able to explain it.

It doesn’t always need to be some expensive trip or travel to another country. But I implore you to try to observe and write about things, places, people, that you come across. Sit at a park or a coffee shop and just watch people. Try to describe what’s happening, what you see. It has been an immense help in improving my descriptive writing skills overall.

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