Lily Writes

Before my smartphone became an extra limb, I carried a small digital camera everywhere. It was always strapped around my wrist—ready to go, snap, click, preserve. My family would roll their eyes when they saw me coming, but when it came time to look back, to find the proof of life lived—holidays, cousins, grandparents now gone—they turned to me. I was the archivist.

I have tens of thousands of photos. People. Places. Cats. (So many cats.)

For years, I thought this was the best way to remember. That the camera was my memory bank. But slowly, I realized something: all that snapping was also a shield. A way of standing slightly outside the moment. Present enough to catch it, not always present enough to feel it.

Be here now. Remember now.

Art changed that for me.

At first, it was just for fun—classes at the local art center, an excuse to buy paints and paper. But when I gave myself permission to simply play, something unlocked. A secret level in my brain. Sitting with pen and watercolors, observing without pressure—sometimes with earbuds, sometimes with nothing but the sounds around me—etched those moments into my memory more vividly than any camera could.

As a writer, I return to those spaces. Not through photographs, but through the imprint of presence. The gelato on a hot afternoon. The smell of white pine needles on a trail. The Milky Way stretching across a lake’s still surface. Those are the sensory touchstones that later pour into a story, anchoring a scene so the reader isn’t just told about a place—they’re there.

That’s the magic we chase as writers.

The dialogue, the relationships, the romance—they drive the story forward. But the details? The details make it real. A kiss in the dark is one thing. A kiss in the dark while crickets sing, while the tang of salt air lingers on the lips—that’s something else.

Which is why accuracy matters.

If I write about oil painting, I’d better not describe it drying in an hour. That’s acrylic. If I write about sculpture, I shouldn’t have someone building a six-foot clay statue in a weekend—that’s not how clay works. If I put a character at a pottery wheel, I need to remember the bisque firing, the glaze firing, the science of it.

And when I decided to write a story with guns in it, I realized: I’d never held one. Not once. Which meant anything I wrote risked sounding false.

So I called a friend. He took me to a range. He taught me safety. He let me fire handguns of every shape and size. (Yes, I even hit the target. To both our surprise.) And for the record—a .44 Magnum has a hell of a recoil.

The first thing I did after that experience? Rewrote the opening chapters of Wolf’s Call.

Because I had missed something huge. The noise. Without it, the scene felt flat, static, fake. Add in the deafening crack of the shot, the way it echoes in your bones, and suddenly—you’re there.

And that’s the lesson, whether with cameras or guns or gelato: it’s not just about remembering. It’s about being present. Observing deeply enough that when the page opens, the world unfolds.

That’s the work. That’s the joy. That’s the magic.

Wolf’s Call (Lillian and Wolf)