REPOST

LOOK!

| August 25, 2013
It’s been awhile. Once again, I’ve gotten off and running in another direction completely and it has meant that my posts have slogged off. While I do want to keep going on this, I find that my persistence needs a kick in the seat on occasion. Thanks for sticking it out!
We’ve gotten to “L” in our trip through the alphabet and this one is eassssy.. It is vision. VISION? That’s not an “L” word…but it is. Our vision is constant, it is all around us and always within us. Where we lose sight, is we fail to do one thing, we fail to LOOK. And I mean really look. Take off your old people, writer goggles and remember what it is to see things like a child. Look with your eyes open to the ordinary and the extraordinary that is all around us. Do we think that all the alternate worlds we have found in literature were delivered part and parcel to the author’s that wrote them? You know…they might have been.
Being open to see the information and ideas that develop into the greatest tales is a trademark of a writer. They are dreamers. They are, at their core, willing to step back and see everything new all over again as they endeavor to describe the mundane and make the fantastical real for the readers. Have you woken from a wild ride through your nocturnal movie projector and thrown your hands out to make sure where you were? You are a writer in training. Once you can see it, then you have to step back and break it down so your words can show it to others. THAT is what I mean about looking.
Writing is not about checking both ways before you cross the street to make sure you aren’t hit by the passing car…it’s jumping into the lane, looking both ways and seeing the promise of exhilaration at the myriad ways your mind finds to see the scene, without losing the adventure before the scene is decimated by the trivial bits of reality that tear apart the incredible.
They say you can know the dreamer by the faraway look in his eye. I do believe that is also where you will find the writers. So…what are you looking at?