I = Interested not interesting
Wow, we are well and truly on the downhill run in the CREATIVE HABITS series! We’ve just reached the 3rd last letter in HABITS – one I believe adds depth and color to the quality of our work. Let’s find out more about I=Interested not interesting…
We can’t know everything we write about intimately and personally. Yet writing from personal experience brings depth and focus to our writing.
How do good writers find a balance between writing what they don’t know and lacking the breadth of knowledge that comes from actual experience, and only writing within the narrow sphere of their own experiences?
They listen to, and are actively interested in other people!
Encouraging friends, relatives, chance met acquaintances, and even business associates to share parts of their lives with you, to talk about their experiences, and to discuss their opinions will not only enrich your writing but will also enrich your life experience too.
I have a friend who became a journalist for this very reason. When asked as a youngster what she wanted to be when she grew up, a policewoman, doctor, lawyer, nurse, teacher, fire fighter, etc, the answer would always be “all of them”. In real life though, no-one has the time to do so many things. You cannot be everything to all people, it’s just impossible.
Journalism allows my friend the opportunity, if not actually to have full experience of all of those occupations, to explore and discover what it is like for these people in their lives. Journalists share the world actively with people and develop a great sense of empathy for other people, because they need to know enough about the subject to write the news stories.
You don’t have to be a fully fledged journalist to learn from other people though. Journalism is a particular style of writing, which does not suit every author. However, keeping an open mind whenever you meet someone new will help anyone as a writer, no matter what they are writing about.
Be open to having more in depth conversations with people about more than the weather and you will soon start to find that snippets of conversations trigger creative thoughts, generate ideas, blend with other experiences, facilitate your own memory of experiences you may have forgotten, and will even help to form characters for fiction writers.
Our brains are truly marvelous devices and it is strange how the mind works.
Have a conversation with someone one day, and you could be using that experience within your own writing years later. Delving into the memory can be a fascinating exercise, especially for anyone who has made a concentrated effort to meet new people and to encourage sharing of lives. You may only remember a single sentence of the conversation, or remember the gist of the conversation at a time when you are writing about a similar experience and the memory can help to form the words.
Being interested in other people helps to stimulate new thoughts, ideas, and creativity, all of which are necessary for good writers.
Your personal experience grows with each person you talk to on a deeper level and this helps you to create writing that not only has a breadth and depth of experience but that speaks to the heart of the reader.
You are more likely to be able to relate directly to each individual reader when your writing shares an experience similar to their own.
Learn the trick of being interested in other people and see the difference it can make in your creative processes and writing quality.
