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Becoming Alive in Every Sense
By Sandra Lee Schubert | March 11, 2008
“A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.”
~ John le Carre (1931 - )
In Writing for Life: Creating a Story of Your Own, you are asked to become a super hero and to look at the ordinary things in your life with extraordinary vision. In previous columns we discussed how writing requires use of all our senses. As writers and artists we are asked to hear, see and know our characters. We must recall a smell or a touch and incorporate it into our writing. How dull writing would if stories had us all eating a red apple under a green tree with a blue sky and wind blowing. The bookstores would close and we would have to do something else with our time.
“Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it ‘creative observation.’ Creative viewing.” ~ William Burroughs, author. “The Creative Observer,” Painting and Guns (1992)
Each day we gather information through our senses. Most of it is assimilated without much consciousness. The speed and amount of information is too much to absorb all at once. Nonetheless, we all can become a little more aware.
Times Square, New York City is sensory overload. There exists every shape and size of tourist and every kind of familiar and unknown language. People are jostling about, yelling, smiling and discovering each other and the surroundings. Since I work right in the heart of Times Square, I have an incredible opportunity of seeing, hearing, smelling and sensing many more things in one day than the average person. I am full of it. It is bright, loud and chaotic and still it amazes me when there is something I had not noticed before. It is if a veil is lifted.
In the midst of all this stimulation, images stand out and later it informs my writing even if the exact image is not written about at all. Maybe your work and home environment is more sedate. Still the opportunity exists for new adventures all the time. Are you willing to take a new tour of your life? Can you walk through your everyday life with open eyes and heart?
© 2008 Sandra Lee Schubert www.writing-for-life.com
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