Whenever you step out of your door, you are met by a road. The road could be a new road or an old one. The road could be so familiar to you that you know every part of that road, you are familiar with the sights and the sounds on that old dusty road. You know the people who live on that street. You remember the first time you walked on that road, so nervous and excited. You wanted to know what was where and who was who on that road, where you lived. It took time but you learned all that you needed to know about life on that road. You were now a resident on that road, you were a part of the community. You were happy to be where you were.
The road to work is always new, it is where you work. You are more familiar with the building and the people who come to work in it as you do every day. That building where you work is an important part of your life. That road on which you walk to your employment every day is also so important to your life and livelihood.
As a tourist, you walk on roads that are unfamiliar to you. The new sights and the new sounds of new people and items are so different. It intrigues your senses and you cannot wait to learn about this new road of discovery that you have found as you visited a foreign land as a tourist. You try to capture all that you have felt on this new road in a new country, its sights, and its sounds.
The colors and the architecture on a foreign road is fascinating, so you take out photos, and videos of the road. You photograph yourself with your friends outside the restaurant where you had the most delicious food. The cuisine eaten in a foreign land tastes so different, the spices seem to burst with flavor. The land seems so welcoming. You have experienced the joys that the road of the tourist has offered you on silver platters.
You go back to the road; you grew up on as a child. The road of childhood is filled with nostalgia. You were that annoying child who did not want to go to school every day, to get caught by those dreaded teachers. That same road also took you to familiar places like the home where your grandparents stayed. You remember the time you spent at the homes of your friends.
You remember the old school and the old church you would go to pray and where you married. You remember the building and the lane, where your first crush used to stay decades ago. You recall the place where you met your sweetheart, the girl who is your wife today. Every road in that city took you to a place that has made a small or large difference to your life that is with you today.
As a writer, we have walked the roads we write about in our stories. We have lived on those roads, met those people, lived in those homes, fallen in and out of love, and faced victories and disappointments in life. The roads we have passed by as writers are the roads that we create for our characters and our stories. We place the heroes, the anti-heroes, the events, the buildings, and all that happens in our stories on those roads.
We rebuild our old roads and fill them with old memories. We build foreign roads and fill them with exciting, sounds, characters, and events. We make new roads where we allow our characters to explore their fictional lives. This in turn opens our minds to more self-discovery as we face new challenges through every character, in the stories we create from our creative imagination. Walk those roads across time and space, because every path has a destination that will be special and filled with magical experiences for you.