This is the Write Now podcast with Sarah Werner episode 29, writing with all of your senses.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I am your host, Sarah Werner, and I have just returned from a mission trip to inland Jamaica. If you’re a subscriber on iTunes or any other podcatcher app, you may notice that I’ve been gone, but I’m back now. And a lot of, I don’t know, life things have been tied up neatly. so I do plan on podcasting regularly every week from here through forever. I guess you’ve got that to look forward to. That makes me sound really not humble.

Anyway, one of the absolute loveliest things that I found upon my return from my mission trip, a trip I might add during which I had zero internet access. So it was just a wonderful and pleasant and beautiful surprise to come back to the States and open up my Gmail app for the first time in eight days, and just see this amazing torrent of emails from listeners like you. I got so many amazing emails from so many amazing people. I don’t know what I did to deserve you listeners, but I think I did something right, because you’re amazing.

I just wanted to share one of the emails I received from podcast listener [Rashaun 00:02:01] In Detroit. She says, “Dear Sarah, I’ve been listening to your Write Now for a month or so. A few of them multiple times, including on my way to bed so your advice sinks into my subconscious. I listen to them with different ears. One for podcast format in the event I’ll ever do one too. One because well, you and your guests give awesome advice, confirming what I tell myself, but now I know I’m not alone in my thinking, which builds confidence. Another reason is to hear your calm, warm, sincere, wise, and spirit-filled voice and humor. Yours and Organize Mindfully are my podcast role models. I’ll write again soon and may see you on NaNoWriMo when you return. Safe travels to you and your group to and from Jamaica. Staying tuned, Rashaun.”

Okay. I know I just said that I’m not humble, but getting feedback like that, it’s truly humbling in the very best way. Rashaun, thank you for your beautiful words and I do hope that we keep in touch. I did in fact enjoy safe travels to and from Jamaica, although the flight on the way back was a little uncomfortable. But seriously, we got through customs in like a half hour. It was incredible, but I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself.

What I want to talk about today is a little bit about my mission trip to Jamaica, but also some of the lessons I learned about writing while I was traveling. I’ve heard it said before that every writer should travel and I don’t know, part of me agrees with that because it’s a great way to see new things and meet new people and et cetera, but travel is not feasible for everyone. I understand that.

I know that a lot of people maybe growing, up or as adults or in retirement had the opportunity to travel to different countries and states and whatnot with their families. But growing up, we had sort of limited means as a family. My dad was a chaplain at a hospital, essentially a pastor, and we had a family of six and his income supported us all. And so we didn’t really get to the jet set out to Hawaii every year. Instead we took a yearly family vacation to Michigan where my dad had a theological conference and we would all tag along. We would rent a minivan so that nobody was sitting in anyone else’s lap and we would stay in college dorms. I think it was at the University of Michigan, so that we wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel.

In the mornings my dad would attend the conference and then in the afternoons, once he was done, we would go to a beach or an attraction and enjoy our vacation. I grew to love Michigan. I still love it. I have so many great memories of going to the Sand Dune parks and buying cherry pies off the side of the road and just all sorts of wonderful things. I think vacations are good whenever you can get them.

But driving once a year from Ohio to Michigan and back again didn’t necessarily broaden my mind in the way that I think international travel can. And again, I’m really torn saying this because even now as an adult, I don’t have the resources to travel. This was my third year going on this mission trip to Jamaica and before that, I had never been out of the country before. I’d never been out of the United States. I wanted to, I mean, I’m one of those people who always dreams of this glamorous life, where I can take off in a jet and just spend a weekend in Paris or London. But I think for most of us, that’s not really feasible or realistic.

So I’ve mentioned before that I work for a website company. We build websites and we do online marketing and all sorts of stuff and our president, Paul, is very passionate about helping people. He has a very clear personal mission and that is to kind of broaden the minds of his workers and to, I don’t know, send us out into the world to do good things, beyond just sitting at our desks, churning out code. And so he has this special allocation that every employee has the opportunity every year to go on a mission trip overseas to Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, or Nicaragua.

And the deal is that Click Reign, the company that I work for, pays half of the costs and also comps you a week of PTO, paid time off, for the time that you’re gone. I am deeply, deeply indebted to Click Reign and to Paul for making travel a possibility for me. I’ve been able to fundraise the necessary half of the funds that I need for the trip and I’ve now done this three times and I love it.

Sometimes when I tell people that I take an annual mission trip to Jamaica, they’re like, “Ooh, really suffering there, aren’t you?” I want to make it very clear that we didn’t just go to a resort on the beach. And in fact, there’s an astonishing disparity between the resort life that tourists who go to Jamaica enjoy, and then real Jamaica, which lies just beyond the fences of the resorts.

Beyond the resorts, Jamaica is very much a developing country and I don’t say that to be judgmental and I hope it doesn’t come off that way. I say that because it’s a very stark difference from the sheer luxury that the Island of Jamaica builds, I think about 90% of its economy on, and then the rest of the island, which is people living in shacks and scratching out farms on the sides of the mountains, the beautiful, beautiful mountains of Jamaica.

There’s a 50% unemployment rate in Jamaica and among the deaf, that number rises to 85% unemployment. So that was really our mission this week and over the past two years that I’ve gone on this trip before this year. People don’t hire the deaf in Jamaica because they are looked down upon and there’s this whole feeling that the deaf can’t. They can’t do this. They can’t do that. They can’t get jobs. They’re worthless and meaningless and that simply is not true.

The deaf that we visited live together in a sort of small community on Shooters Hill, which is one of the mountains of Jamaica in Mandeville. Mandeville is beautiful. It’s known as cool, cool Mandeville. And it’s, I want to say probably a good 10 degrees cooler than it is on the beaches. That was kind of a relief for me. I’m pasty pale and I don’t do too well in the sun. But we went to this place called the Jamaican Deaf Village where the deaf are encouraged to live in affordable housing. They are given the opportunity to take out small loans for a chicken farm or a small business idea, small loans that amount to US$200. They are coached in sort of vocational skills like construction work, sewing, woodworking, raising cattle and much more.

I love this place. It feels like home to me. I love driving up the winding driveway all the way up the mountain into the Deaf Village. I love reuniting each year with people that I’ve seen before. It’s amazing. And the food is great. I mean, it’s not luxurious by any means, but that’s not what you’re there for. You’re there to make lasting relationships. You’re there to remind people that they have meaning and worth and dignity and that they are beautiful and that they are loved.

Our base camp was at the Jamaican Deaf Village, and then every morning we would go out to a different place in Jamaica that needed help. Then in the afternoon we would do construction work. And construction work … like humanitarian stuff I can do. I love hugging people and affirming them and encouraging them. I love it. It’s part of who I am and it comes very naturally to me, but construction work, slightly less so. I’ve become soft and squishy because of my desk job and I was never really much of an athlete anyway. And in fact, I was not an athlete at all. I was always just kind of a dork who’s very pale and gangly and read a lot of books.

So doing construction work in essentially a third world country, I don’t know, every year I know that I’m going to do it and then every year I’m just blown away by the experience and how terrible I am at construction work. My job this year was shoveling cement into wheelbarrows and in Jamaica, they don’t really have all the equipment that we do here in the United States or Canada or Britain or wherever it is that you’re listening from. And so we were shoveling rocks into wooden buckets, dumping the buckets into this churning thing, along with the cement and then buckets and buckets of water. And we were essentially mixing the cement on pavement and then carrying it upstairs into a room in buckets and dumping it onto a floor, which we then leveled.

My job was to shovel the cement, which we had added lots and lots of rocks to, to make it go further since everything in Jamaica has to be imported and is therefor very, very expensive. So I got sunburned and I got very sore, but it was also a great experience. I led the team this year and I took a team of 13 people, some of whom were coworkers and some of whom were from banks and other industries around town. Together we did construction work alongside the deaf construction workers.

They were just so kind and gracious to us and patient with me as I flailed and attempted to shovel cement and just got very, very sunburned. So bless their hearts. They’re wonderful people and they were just so accommodating to those of us who were very much out of our element. So I’m very grateful to them, especially to the foreman Lawrence, who is encouraging and kind, and just very, very patient.

Aside from several half days of construction work, our days were also occupied by visiting a deaf school. The Deaf Village is where deaf adults can go and live, but there are also several boarding schools for deaf children around Jamaica. There’s one in Kingston, one in Knockpatrick, and one in … why am I going to forget this one? Sorry, I can’t remember where the third campus is located off the top of my head. I’ll probably remember it at like three in the morning and be like, “Shoot, I need to go redo this recording,” but I won’t do that.

So anyway, there are three deaf boarding schools on the Island of Jamaica and we visited two of them. We spent a morning at the deaf school in Kingston, which has about 70 kids of differing needs, not all of them are deaf. Some of them are special needs kids who don’t really have anywhere else to go and so they’re able to go to the school and learn. But boy, it was such a beautiful place, there’s just mango trees everywhere. I mean, it’s not luxurious or glamorous, but it’s a great environment for kids to learn. And I saw so many smiling, happy faces and just thought how amazing it is that these kids have found a place to communicate with each other and to form a community where they are safe and where they are welcomed and where they are able to communicate. I just thought that was really cool.

We hung out with some of the older kids at the Kingston campus and then the other school that we visited was in Knockpatrick, where there are, I think slightly more students. I think there’s maybe nearly 100 students at the Knockpatrick campus, but the kids are just great. We played soccer, AKA football and reminded them that they’re awesome because they are awesome. We went to two more places that were still amazing, but that were maybe slightly more difficult to process because it really gets into the heart of how life can be very, very different and difficult for people and how not everybody has a universal experience.

The first of those places we visited twice and this was the orphanage or as they call it a children’s home because not all of the children are orphans. Some of them are foster children, others have different stories, but all of the children … there are about 30 children living in a very, very small house. And there’s a little enclosed play area in the front that’s covered in asphalt, and the kids are all age newborn through kindergarten.

This is my third year visiting the children’s home and unlike the Deaf Village where I’m very excited to see the same faces over and over, I’ve seen some of these kids for three years straight and it’s hard. It’s hard for me. Jamaica does not allow out of country or foreign adoptions and so I don’t know, there’s just a huge sense of helplessness when you go to this place. And you see these kids and these beautiful children, and you realize that outside of hanging out with them for a couple days out of the year, there’s really not a whole lot you can do.

There’s one kid that I see every year. He’s a little boy and the first time I met him, he was a baby and now he’s a toddler. I see him every year and my heart just breaks because I want to adopt him and I can’t. He’s just the most beautiful little boy in the world and he has these gorgeous eyes and just this very serious look on his face. And just realizing that he is a child that somebody doesn’t want just breaks my heart. So that was hard for me this year.

The other place we go, that’s sort of difficult to be in is the infirmary. In a lot of warmer culture countries, not so in America, when you get older, you simply live with your family and they take care of you and they help nurse you and all that stuff. So the infirmary is a place where the elderly and the sick and the infirm go when they don’t have family or money to take care of them.

It’s this big open area pavilion, and there’s a men’s dorm and a women’s dorm and there are just people everywhere. Sick people, people with disabilities and all sorts of things. This is where I really started thinking about writing and how simply telling you what I saw and what I heard in this place paints a very incomplete picture. So I can tell you that I saw these white cinder block dormitories with red roofs and red floors on the side of a mountain, overlooking a valley. A beautiful lush green valley, I mean, they had a wonderful view.

I can tell you that I saw people with missing limbs and missing eyes and no teeth and people who looked a little frightening. And I can tell you that when I entered one of the dorms, I saw rows of beds, almost touching with maybe about three to six inches between each bed, and on each bed there was just a crumpled form, lying under a thin sheet. I thought about the lives of these people and how their lives were ending but that picture is still incomplete because what I saw isn’t the full truth of what I experienced at the infirmary.

There was also the smell. So inland Jamaica, electricity is extremely expensive and so there is no indoor plumbing. So each of these beds had a bed pan and the smell as you walked through the infirmary is rather incredible. There’s the smells of human waste and dirtiness and the bleachy smell of a doctor’s office. And there’s a smell of loss and despair. It’s very hard to describe and over all of it is the humidity in the cool shade of Jamaica.

Whenever we go, it’s close to monsoon season so it kind of rains every day at four o’clock. So there’s always the scent of rain in the air and the smell of rice and beans and spices coming from the cafeteria. In addition to the smell and to the sight, there’s the sound. There’s a low murmuring of conversation. And every once in a while there comes a sharp shriek or a wail, or someone decides to sing. I was in the men’s dormitory, sitting down, talking to a gentlemen named Easton, and lying on the bed next to me was a man who was just wailing in pain.

I’ve never seen a man laying down and whimpering and wailing and pain before, but he did it the entire time I was there and I felt so helpless. And his sound, his sort of wailing sound mixed with the thunder in the distance and the breeze and the mango trees and the ackee trees and someone’s radio playing far away.

In addition to the sights and the smell and the sound, there was the touch. It’s cooler in Mandeville and as I went into the women’s dorms, hands would just come up from the beds and you could tell it that these were people who are just hungry for human contact. So I held hands as I walked through the women’s dorm and everyone’s hands were so cool and several of the women said, “Your hands are so hot. It’s so nice.” With these frail cool hands of these women who are on their way out of this world, you mix that with all the other senses and you start to feel the experience of what it was like to be at this infirmary.

So the Deaf Village, the school campuses, the children’s home and the infirmary, those were all the different mission places that we visited during our trip. We also spent a little bit of a fun day on Friday, just as a little bit of a relief we went beach hopping a little bit. We went to Alligator Pond, which is just a really lovely place. There’s a river that runs into the ocean there and it’s a nice beach area. So we hung out there for a while and then we made the drive to Little Ochie for delicious seafood. Essentially the restaurant’s on the beach and so they catch the seafood and they grill the seafood and then they bring it out to you. We had just a lovely dinner together as a group, and it was a great way to say goodbye to Jamaica as we watched the sunset on the beach there. Montego Bay, that’s the name of the other campus. I knew I would remember it. Montego Bay.

I thought again about writing as we made the three and a half hour drive from Mandeville, Manchester area to Montego Bay, where we flew out. During that drive, I thought of all the things that kind of signified the experience that I’d had in Jamaica and all of the different senses that you really need to compel, to give a true telling of everything that you had seen and heard and smelled and touched and tasted there. That is the feel of the humidity and the smell of the open fires that are used to cook food, the smell of salt water at the beach, feel of the sand and the water beneath your feet or up in the mountains. The smell of the cool humid breeze.

I think that often we’re tempted to write in a way that emulates movies, but movies are limited to sight and sound. But I think as writers, I think that’s what we focus most on and we think less about touch and taste and smell, but these components can really make for a rich story. So don’t tell me that you’re watching the rain fall, tell me what it smells like. Evoke that sort of dusty smell that comes before and after rain. Let me know what it looks like and sounds like, but let me know what the air tastes like. Let me know what the raindrops feel like. Are they cold? Are they warm? Are they biting? Are they soft and gentle?

I really think that you can get a lot of richness and that you can really engage readers with the more senses that you can engage in your writing. What I’m not saying here is that every single thing that you describe has to have an aspect of all five senses attached to it. And so Susan carried a bowl of soup from the stove. It smelled like this and it tasted like this and it was hot on her hands and it looked delicious and … you don’t have to hit all five senses for every single thing you describe. But if there’s a better way to describe something than with sight or sound, I encourage you to give it a try, especially if it’s not a sense that you would normally equate with what you’re describing.

I talked about the smell of rain and not the traditional sight and sound that we associate with it. I think that the more you can immerse a reader in your story with as many senses as fits the story, I think you can go a long way into drawing them into a really engaging and meaningful storytelling experience. A great way to do this is while you’re writing, imagining that you’re there in the scene and really evoking in your mind what that place is really like. Be there with your characters, stand there with them, sit there with them. Think beyond the dialogue. You don’t have to think too far beyond the dialogue, but those rich, central details, once again can really go a long way in enriching your story.

This week’s book of the week is Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn. Silent in the Grave is a really cool mashup between the genres of historical fiction and mystery. The story centers around lady Julia Grey, who is recently widowed and finds herself in the investigation of what she had originally thought was her husband’s natural demise. She meets up with a very Heathcliffian, dark, brooding hero, very Byronic sort of man named Nicholas Brisbane, who’s an investigator. And sort of ends up finding new life and moving from your typical mid 19th century wealthy woman to very progressive female sleuth. It’s really delightful to watch her character change and grow. And of course, to observe the budding romance between her and this very gruff dashing hero.

The mystery is very well plotted. It kept me guessing until the end and it was just secret after secret revealed, which I really enjoyed. It was very well written, very well researched and really delightful. Just a very, very well written book that I would heartily recommend to pretty much everyone. There are several books. It is the first book in a series. And so I actually kind of cheated and read the first three recently. So Silent in the Grave is the first one. The second one is called Silent in the Sanctuary and the third one is called Silent on the Moor and that’s where I’ve read up until. They are just all really delightful and the characters are engaging and well drawn and three-dimensional, and just very interesting. Even if you’re not a huge fan of historical fiction, which I’m not incredibly, it’s interesting and it’s engaging and just a really fun read.

So Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn, perhaps inspired by Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and all those other sort of beloved classics. Give it a try if you’re looking for something new and different. If you have any recommendations of what I should be reading next, let me know. You can send me an email to hello@sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. You can also go to my website, navigate to the contact page and just type out a brief message there. I’d love to hear book recommendations, thoughts on this podcast episode, thoughts in general, whatever. I love being in touch with listeners. It’s one of my very favorite things about podcasting, is meeting all of you awesome, exciting people.

On a more time sensitive subject. So the week that I was in Jamaica was the first week of November and for those of you who are all about NaNoWriMo you’ll know that that was also the first week of NaNoWriMo, AKA National Novel Writing Month. I have a whole podcast about what National Novel Writing Month is, and that is in episode 27. You can go and listen to that. But unfortunately … I tried to catch up when I got back and I wrote, I think about 3,000 words and then life happened and yeah.

So if you followed me on NaNoWriMo, please don’t judge me too harshly. I’m still going to try for my very meager and modest goal of 170 words a day, which is about one 10th of what I’m supposed to be writing, but you know what? I do what I can. We all do what we can and if you are plotting away at NaNoWriMo … you get it? Plotting, plotting. Maybe, I don’t know. Puns. If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, I hope that you are having much better luck than I am this year. And by luck, I mean investment of time, because writing has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with how hard you work at it.

So if you’re doing NaNoWriMo, I wish you all of the best and I’m just in awe of you that you are doing this. Keep up the amazing work. If you’re not doing NaNoWriMo or if you’re failing miserably, like I am, it’s okay. I still applaud you for signing up and if you can, attempt to write 170 words with me every day for the remainder of November and we’ll see how far that gets us. It’s better than writing nothing every day. I’m with you in spirits and just really hoping that you’re making the most of this little writing adventure.

As usual, I have several people to whom I am greatly indebted for their assistance and support emotionally, spiritually, financially, in the production of this podcast. Most notably I would like to thank my Patreon supporters, including cool cat [Sean Locke 00:00:29:50], rad dude [Andrew Coons 00:00:29:53], and official bookworm, [Rebecca Werner 00:29:56], as well as the other, several generous donors. You all do so much in helping me to defray hosting and other costs that come along with podcasting and I truly, truly appreciate your continued support. So thank you so much.

If you are interested in becoming a Patreon supporter and you are not already, there is a link in today’s show notes that you can click on, that will take you to my Patreon page. You can also just look for the Write Now podcast on patreon.com. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com. I would also like to thank Click Reign and notably my boss, Paul, for allowing me to travel. I said earlier that if I didn’t have this mission trip to go on, I never would have left the country and I never would have met all these amazing and beautiful people. And so I’m just greatly indebted to Click Reign for sending me on a mission trip for the past three years. So thank you so much.

Finally, thank you to everyone who sent me encouraging notes and emails while I was gone in Jamaica. Coming back to see my inbox just full of delightful messages just really, I don’t know. I can’t even describe it, not even using all my senses. I’m just so grateful to have found a community of writers and podcast listeners like you. I’m so grateful so thank you for your continued support. And with all of that, this has been the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m Sarah Werner and I am so glad to be back.