In 2022, three friends and I went to the Sacred Valley.

We stayed in Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire, and spent the week exploring the Andes, Andean towns, Macchu Picchu.

I was in awe: these staggeringly sophisticated people had invented agricultural methods that produced more than half the food products the world eats today–and in a mostly vertical landscape; their architecture that allowed them to build stone walls with neither gaps nor mortar; the mystery at the heart of Macchu Picchu, and so on.

And they’d been here, right where I was standing.

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One day, we decided to hike up to Lago Humantay. We piled into a van at 5am and traversed the vertiginous Andes, around hairpin turns with sheer vertical drop-offs inches from the van’s tires. Our phones had no bars and we didn’t pass a single sign.

And you know what song was playing on the van’s radio?

“Final Countdown.”

(Da da da daaaaa, da da da da da da daaaaa…)

At first I was annoyed, because it felt so very U.S. So very mundane. It was ruining my Andean reverie.

But then I realized:

The van driver, a local, had chosen the song. And this song was as much a part of his everyday life as their Inca heritage.

(I’m not saying I like U.S. hegemony, but it helps to accept that it exists. And my experience in the Sacred Valley was no less sacred because of it.)

No matter how “exotic,” how larger-than-life, how distant someone else’s story may seem, there is always something we share with them.

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When I first started working in a women’s prison in 2010, I worried I’d have nothing to offer them. I’d never been incarcerated; how could I relate to their experience?

I was wrong. We bonded over our love of music and our families, hating bland food, wanting a more exciting life, the fear that we might never have it.

We had SO much more in common than I thought.

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Since I began ghostwriting, I’ve met clients who at first made me think, “I can’t write for them, we’re practically from different planets.”

We’re not.

We all know about loneliness and hope and frustration. We all have opinions about French fries and we all like being right and we don’t like being dismissed. We all know the riff to “Final Countdown.”

*

Whatever you’re writing about–especially if it’s unusual for your readers– look for the thread of the everyday. The universal. The human.

It won’t make your story less exciting. In fact, it’ll make the exciting parts all the more interesting, because now you’ve established a shared experience.

Have you ever been surprised to find you have something in common with someone? What was that like?

I’m Kimberly, and I’m a book coach and ghostwriter who helps people bring the book they’re dreaming of to life. If you’re looking for some support, guidance, accountability, and advice in your writing, send me a message using the form below. I’d love to see how I can support you.