Barbara's Three Writing Friends

I have three friends for writing: reading, observing, and thinking. Lately I've been swimming in magnificent reading, not only for this course, but also for my directed study course, where I'm continuing a nonfiction book. The great biography, superb audio books, and most relevant essays I've read so far cannot but push me over the crest of the wave in the process. Actually, reading amounts to silent listening, and so I listen to brilliant literary minds spin a tale, explain a life, and explain ideas, and the cacophony in my brain that ensues has to result in either a lecture or a piece of writing (which amounts to silent speaking).l

Observing or watching occurs in everyday life with all of my senses. I can watch myself, a friend or a stranger in action--I can also watch my cat, for that matter. And the watching includes more than the visual; it includes touching, hearing, smelling, and tasting. At the same time, all this observing also takes place in the reading that I do, because I get lost int he tale spun by a writer, and I find myself watching a character in a piece of fiction or nonfiction.

Finally, my own thinking, sparked by reading and observation, inevitably either conjures up its own characters or its own conclusions, as inevitably as an avalanche occurs with the right amount of snow, humidity, wind, and vibration. I end up writing in spite of myself because somebody has to put this stuff down on paper. It's exciting!