Do Crappy Experiences Create Good Writers?

Today as I absorbed my morning caffeine, I read my friend Rae Ellen Lee’s excellent book Cheating the Hog, which is the story of a woman working in a sawmill in a remote area. As I read scenes describing the hard physical labor, I was reminded of when I worked at a tree farm during graduate school in Oklahoma. The farm was owned by the US Forest Service and, forest and wilderness lover that I am, I thought it was cool to be able to say I worked for the USFS.

The work was definitely not cool, t...