Nate Briggs's Blog - Posts Tagged "observation"

5 Signs That You Were Born to Write

1) Walking through a neighborhood, you see an unusual house: perhaps of an unusual design, set back from the street, or hemmed in by trees. The instant you see it, you start wondering who lived there. Were they happy? Were they in love? Were they frightened? Did they live a long time?

Normal people don't wonder about these things.

2) You see someone crying on the train, and think about it the rest of the day. What had happened? Who were those people she was with? Did she feel better later? What was going through the minds of the rest of the people in the car?

Normal people don't think about something like this the rest of the day.

3) You look at a photograph from 100 years ago and a face in it makes an impression on you. Who was that person? How did they get into the picture? What happened before the picture? What happened after? Were they happy in their lives? Did they die young?

Normal people don't wonder about strangers long dead.

4) You get busy with a manuscript and don't remember you've got something cooking until you smell the pan burning and the smoke detector goes off.

Normally we call these people absent minded, but this happens to writers all the time.

5) You bounce urgently out of bed, looking for pencil and paper, because - in 5 seconds - you're going to forget how that sentence should go and the perfect way it's expressed (in your mind) will be lost forever.

Normal people just roll over and go back to sleep
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Published on December 07, 2014 12:11 Tags: composition, destiny, observation, writing