Julia, I enjoyed my peruse of your observations on writing, expressed here. There are some fascinating parallels between what you've shared with us here and insights into the creative writing process that Amy Tan delves into so uniquely in her last book (Where The Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir, 2017). Aside from the basic requisite of an always active, inflamed imagination, experience (either direct or vicarious, i.e. through reading) is the foundational platform all writer's stand upon. And that 'experience' should, ideally, span all subjects, all eras and all chronological contexts. It is, boiled down to its essence, the famous old saying "It's all grist for the mill."

By my reckoning, one of the greatest tragedies of our modern American society is an almost total abnegation of even the slightest crumb of interest in what has gone before. That is, a near consensual attitude among the young that nothing really matters except their own, highly concentric, often flagrantly narcissistic associations and myopic affinities (read: social media). Thus, history, which contains just about every human experience ever lived, is sloughed off as a mere 'useless' collection of experiential relics of a bygone era, that have neither modern relevance nor utility.

Writers intuitively know that attitude to be not just tragic and false, but a total contravention of what should be apparent to any intelligent, thoughtful individual...that history (and knowledge of it) is the essential core of experiential 'raw material' itself.

Count me in as one of your 'followers'. I find it most enjoyable and rewarding to tap into your mind (even if it's vicarious)... Not quite a Vulcan Mind-Meld, but still pretty darn cathartic... Aloha nui loa, me ka malama pono. -K2