How to Become a Better Writer (Part 2)
Have Something to Say about Life
In Part 1 of this series, I give you the basics of writing, but it’s not just about the technicalities. Writing and anything creative is about real, unedited moments when life sometimes decides who gets final cut. Nothing makes you understand life more than living and sometimes, facing death. If you don’t go out and live your life, you will have nothing to say, which is the only sin in storytelling.
Have I lived? Oh, I’m glad you asked. Here’s a tale from … let’s call it ‘back in the day’.
I was young and excited to return to Zimbabwe (where I was serving in the Peace Corps) after a trip to Amsterdam to ring in the new year. I sat on the flight staring out of the window at the vastness of Africa, looking forward to seeing the majestic Kilimanjaro poke above the clouds again— which we passed on the way to Amsterdam. I made my first musical choice - Nirvana’s All Apologies.
About two hours before we were set to pass that majestic mountain, the sky turned ominous. A massive lightning storm surrounded us, illuminating a surreal night below. The thunder cracked so loud it felt like it was inside the cabin. The storm seemed to get more and more intense when — a CLAP of thunder slapped what felt like the back of the plane and… we dropped.
Not a slow, gentle descent. No. A full-blown, stomach-suspended-in-midair, gravity-disappeared kind of drop. It lasted for what seemed like forever until - the plane caught and we slammed onto the next air current. Those who didn’t have their seatbelts on or were walking slammed onto the roof. But despite that, the plane steadied out and things seemed normal again… much to our collective relief. And then, weirdly, we just stared at each other in shock and laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it was so surreal. Did that just happen?
Then came the second drop. If the first one lasted forever, this one was an eternity. Infinity. Five seconds. Ten seconds. The plane just kept falling. The oxygen masks popped out as the flight attendants rushed to the back. The captain came over the speaker telling them to prepare for an emergency landing. Across the isle from me, an elderly woman put her hands together in prayer.
I made my second musical choice and put on Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds. I refused to go down worrying. Crazy right? I sent love to my family, all the friends I had known. But I did not want to go down scared, even though I was terrified.
And then—wham! The plane caught itself. Hard again - I wasn’t sure if the fuselage would hold, but it did somehow. We leveled out. It was over. A moment of stunned silence spread across the cabin before a wave of nervous, relieved sighs. The elderly woman next to me, who had been praying moments before, let out something between a laugh and a sob. We were alive.
But the captain came on and told us about our second surprise, we were going in for an emergency landing in Khartoum, Sudan. He informed us that we were not going to disembark. And if we were forced to, then we should under no circumstances admit if we were from the US or UK. Everyone laughed because they weren’t from either of those godforsaken countries… haha.
We sat on the tarmac for hours. And in that liminal space, we found unexpected companionship. I struck up conversations with two school kids who were flying alone. Since I was a teacher, we became instant friends. I met a girl my age who had just returned from studying in London, and even ended up sharing every last drop of Jack Daniel’s on that flight with a spirited Spanish guy. It was wild—just hours earlier, we’d been plummeting from the sky, and now here we were, laughing over leftover snacks. There was an odd sense of calm in that shared absurdity, a moment where the terror had melted into a kind of strange camaraderie. We watched the African sun rise in a quiet, surreal spectacle that felt almost impossible after what we had lived through.
Eventually, we took off again, but our adventure wasn’t over. We landed in Egypt at midnight, only to step off the plane into an airport that felt more like a ghost town. There was no one waiting at the gate—no airport officials, no Air Egypt staff - nothing. Everyone was confused. Many of us had connections. What the hell was going on?
One of the passengers spotted a lone Air Egypt official and we surrounded him, demanding to know what was happening. With broken English he shouted “No, Air Egypt. Strike!” before trying to slip away. But we chased him down and eventually, after a bit of a shakedown, he reluctantly produced a handful of hotel and meal vouchers. Just like that, we were handed an unexpected, all-expenses-paid weekend in Cairo.
The absurdity of it all was now bordering on ridiculous. I’d seen the pyramids before, but never like this. —with a free layover and meal vouchers…? ok then. I spent that impromptu weekend roaming the lavish hotel with the school kids. I also got to know that intriguing girl on her return from London, who wrote her number with a heart on a piece of paper for me to call her when we got back to Zim. This trip was turning out great!
By Monday, it was time to head back. I guess the Air Egypt strike was over. In the air, I finally flew by the familiar and stunning Kilimanjaro, which peaked over the clouds, reaching for the rising sun, standing watch over Africa. I guess things work out in unexpected ways sometimes. I made my third musical choice of the day. Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles.
When I finally landed back in Zimbabwe, I was informed that my luggage was not going to arrive for a week. Somehow that made total sense. I shrugged it off and rushed to the Peace Corps retreat which I was already two days late for. The retreat was being hosted at a beautiful, safari resort so, that afternoon I went canoeing.
On a beautiful lake, I watched a giraffe and its family graze within 400 feet in stunning silence. It was something so beautiful that words can’t do it justice. Just then, it rained - a hard, African rain. I let the rain soak me on the lake when I remembered — the girl’s phone number! I reached into my pocket and sat in disbelief as the phone number, which had been written in marker, was nothing more than a smudge.
I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. With my headphones on, I put on Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World, letting the song’s gentle optimism echo around me. Even after all that chaos, all that near-death drama and unexpected detours, the world indeed seemed wonderful.
And THESE are the types of experiences that can fuel your writing and make you a better writer… if you are willing to live life.
Lmk in the comments if you have some wild stories too! Or boring ones and we can dramatize them ;)