Late Again

The below is a little late, well, maybe more than a little.  It's all because I had a serendipity day yesterday that was unexpected. It's a long story, but I ended up at Disneyland. Nobody seemed to care that it was rainy and there were lots of people spending their Valentine's Day there.  I wrote the below before I left, thinking I'd post it when I got home.  I didn't expect to get home so late or so tired..  Anyway, so here it is....

 I noticed one of the author questions on Goodreads asked about the benefits of being a writer. It made me start thinking about what it was that I most liked about being a writer. I certainly like to make up stories. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid and they were for my own amusement. I’d tell them to myself as I was falling asleep or when I was on a long walk.

I made up stories for the kids I babysat for. The one I remember most was called Ant Orange and Boo Fairy and had something to do with the two of them going off to see the world beyond the Great Puddle where they lived.

But there is something else that enriches my every day life. It’s the way I look at things. I notice every thing. The way the sun shines through the raindrops hanging on the orange trees, making them sparkle. I study the sky for the shade of blue and the shape of the clouds. I think about how the weather makes me feel. When it is dark and gloomy and rain is beating down, I too feel beaten down, tired loggy.

I’m always looking for the right words to describe things. The yellow yarn I see at Joann’s has to have a more precise description. Is it lemon yellow or sunlight? I watch people, trying to capture their essence. I listen to sound of their voice and think about how to describe it.

Because of all the looking and studying, I think I experience the world more fully. It is not a passive experience more interactive as I think about what I’m seeing.

It’s the way I watch TV or movies or even commercials. I am thinking about the set, the actors, the lighting. What is going on just out of sight. The structure of the story. With commercials, I’m always checking out the location. How a mood is set, a story told. I think about the casting of drug commercials. How do you audition to play someone going through chemo who feels yucky, but at the same time hopeful that a drug with a side effect of death won’t do you in.

All this looking, thinking and examining makes my everyday life much more interesting even when I’m not writing.