A view askew
I should have been ready for this, and I'm more surprised that I wasn't than I am that it happened: Writing changes how you see the world. This should have been obvious to me since I've dabbled in photography since I was a kid and the same holds true there. In photography, there comes a point when you don't just look at things anymore: You start to frame them; You think about the lighting; You think about composition. Everything becomes a potential photograph in your eye. What's more, you never really go back to how it was before. Once your perception shifts, it's there for good.
Writing does the same thing to you. Take a walk and look at things happening around you. There will come a time when you no longer simply look at and dismiss them. You start describing them in your mind. You look at two people sitting on opposite sides of a park bench and you wonder about them. Perhaps they're strangers, sitting far apart because they're uncomfortable with an unknown person near them. That might seem plain and boring at first, but you dig deeper. Maybe one of them is looking for someone to speak with, anyone at all, but is afraid to open a conversation. It gets more interesting. Why does he need to talk? What is his story? Did something bad happen to him? Did he do something wrong and needs to confess it? How will the other person react if and when he's told?
Where once you'd see two people sitting and avoiding each other without giving them a passing thought, now you see possibilities. Everything becomes a story, and you want to know that story. You can discover their stories, or create ones for them. Either way, you won't walk past that bench any longer without seeing a story there. You've crossed over, and there's no going back.
Writing does the same thing to you. Take a walk and look at things happening around you. There will come a time when you no longer simply look at and dismiss them. You start describing them in your mind. You look at two people sitting on opposite sides of a park bench and you wonder about them. Perhaps they're strangers, sitting far apart because they're uncomfortable with an unknown person near them. That might seem plain and boring at first, but you dig deeper. Maybe one of them is looking for someone to speak with, anyone at all, but is afraid to open a conversation. It gets more interesting. Why does he need to talk? What is his story? Did something bad happen to him? Did he do something wrong and needs to confess it? How will the other person react if and when he's told?
Where once you'd see two people sitting and avoiding each other without giving them a passing thought, now you see possibilities. Everything becomes a story, and you want to know that story. You can discover their stories, or create ones for them. Either way, you won't walk past that bench any longer without seeing a story there. You've crossed over, and there's no going back.
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