Description of good writers in my
Creative Nonfiction book for my narrative journalism class:
"Such writers pay attention to what goes on around them and are curious about nearly everthing. They have read not just American history but also Russian history. They can find Trinidad-Tobago on a globe. They're intrigued by Caribbean weather, suburban traffic patterns, how farm machinery works...
They listen to how new lovers talk, watch how they move their hands during an argument across the room. They touch the coarse fabric of an old army uniform jacket - and the broken knees of an old friend who once played football. They roll down their windows and stop the car so they can smell the night breeze outside of Deming, New Mexico. And even at that moment, when they are completely captivated by the moment, they are also outside themselves, inventing the words they would use to describe the aroma of dust, hot asphalt and sage. They can't help it. They are in the habit of noticing things through words.
When they go on vacation, they go off the tour. It isn't that they are not astonished by cathedrals, but they are more fascinated by the old women in black shawls drinking aperitifs at the tobacco shop next door at nine o'clock in the morning - in the looming shadow of a sacred Gothic architecture of light...
They deliberately do things they've never done, go places they haven't been, even - especially - to places in their own backyards. They climb up into their neighbor's attic and watch their own house from a completely new perspective - briefly, irrationally thrilled, expecting some stranger to emerge from their own front door.
They make it a point to be where interesting things are liable to happen. And because they prowl the world with their eyes wide open and their ears pricked for sound, wherever they go, interesting things are liable to happen."
This is who I want to be. This is who I'm becoming already. And this is who I've always, always been.
Love always,
molly
