Power of Observation

All the new people I have met and the new things I have experienced has suddenly set my muse aflame with ideas. For the past day or so ideas have been popping into my head out of nowhere. I have also noticed that I have begun to study people, notice more what they are wearing or how they carry themselves, their actions. I figured that I should not let these observations go unnoted. All these people are a character, in some way shape or form.

In creative writing class a few years ago (3 years!), my creative writing teacher gave us a writing prompt where we were instructed to write about a character, picking something specific about the charater that made him memorable. At the time, since it was still relatively new to me, I used the robbery at Rite Aid and focused on his eyes, those dark, brown orbs I stared into for five minutes. The purpose of the exercise was to learn character development.

So I figured that since I am interested in observing everyone at the moment, I might as well start keeping a writing journal, a journal of just random observations I notice, whether it be people, places, things, dialogue between people, anything that I could use later on to develop a story. What could it hurt right?

I ran to Barnes and Noble and bought a leather bound journal, something I knew that I would want to write in, something I wouldn't mind carrying around with me. It took me an hour to do so and was almost late to a meeting, but I did it.

As soon as I opened to the first page, the first thing I did was write about the one character that I knew the best, myself. Not only did I describe my physical features, but I described my personality too as well. It was rather fun and not as hard as I thought.

Then I moved on to the next person I saw, which was the lawyer for the council. His balding head was as shiny as a newly waxed floor that if it weren't for my antiglare glasses, I might have had to squint. He was a little more difficult to describe because I automatically wanted to say that he was your typical middle aged lawyer, but this is a generalization and not descriptive at all. It was rather fun, sitting there, studying someone and noting down their traits.

It will definitely be interesting what kind of random things I fill this journal with because I want to take down everything I see, hear, taste, feel, and smell. So many writers start out with random jumbled journals that they manage to utilize. I think this will get the juices flowing and provide me with an unlimiting resource.