Being a Writer = Seeing

How often do you read something—script, novel, comic book, play, essay—and wonder how the writer thought of that? You smile as you read or you mentally say “sweet” because that insight or story turn is clever, thus making your reading of the piece even more fun. And then later, when you step back and think about it, you wonder where that idea came from. You think you never could have thought of that.

Well, why not? What does that writer do that you don’t?

My husband has said to me—more than once—that for a writer I don’t notice so many things. And he’s right. I don’t pay much attention to things in rooms, I don’t remember faces and I really don’t remember names. When a novelist goes on and on about the description of, say, the mother’s office in their story, I get bored. And if a screenwriter goes on and on about the description of that office… well, no, that wouldn’t happen, would it? A good screenwriter just doesn’t go on and on in their narrative.

But I notice other things. On a trip to Cornwall in England years ago, I sat in a country church courtyard, with a few gravestones scattered here and there from centuries long ago, and I saw a bunch of very old gravestones propped up against the stone wall of the churchyard. I then sat there and wrote a poem about it. In the course of the poem I wondered why the stones were there, what happened for them to have been removed from the graves they had marked, and then I went further, and imagined that the stone had feelings, that the stones could see and hear, and I imagined their lives.

Their lives? Stones with lives?! Well, yeah. That, to me, is what makes me tick. I notice something unimportant to almost anyone else walking through that churchyard and think about it. And in thinking about it, I create a new world… in this case, a world where stones have feelings, wants, desires… not, obviously, a real world, but my imagined world o‘ stones.

This particular observation led nowhere beyond that poem. But maybe one day I’ll use it in something - who knows?

These instances of observing are what I call writerly exercise. You might go to the gym a couple of times a week to exercise your body, you might play with puzzles to flex your brain's muscles, well, that’s what writers do when they observe in a way a ‘normal’ person wouldn’t—they flex their writerly muscles.

Everybody sees—writers just see… differently.

So this week, do something new—look at something you see every day and try and see it differently… then write down your thoughts. And next week, I’ll tell you what to do with them!

Happy seeing!

Copyright © Diane Lake

30Jun19

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