Active Observing
I used to think that observation of the world around was a passive endeavor. If I am at the library looking out the window and it starts to rain, I am observing the rain.
The older I get as a writer, the more I realize that this is not observing. At least it is not automatically observing. What I’ve described is seeing, or at best, noting the rain.
Observing requires a specific choice. Our attention as people has many dimensions, and though they often overlap, observation of something, and seeing/noting it activate distinct varieties of our attention.
To see something we need only be present, with our eyes, (or what we use for eyes) activated. That kind of attention is merely reflexive.
Observational attention entails, I think, some degree of questioning. The questions may not have answers, but they partner with what we see during a time of observation. That requires a conscious flip of a “switch” to a specific type of attention.
Even if you do not ask question about what you see, to observe is acknowledge detail, envision alternatives, absorb though insight that which is intangible but nonetheless logical about the scene before us.
Earlier in may life I would have considered this more attune to studying. And in a sense this is studying, but it is not so clinical, nor so laborious as a literal study of something. Studying has a specific agenda, whereas active an open observation exists for its own sake. Certainly we may learn through mere observation. Yet the purpose, in this context of observation, is to take in, to experience the wholeness the “all-ness” of what surrounds us.
“Mindfulness” as some spiritual practices call it.
Taking this definition into account, all writers must engage in active observation. There are other common, logical pieces of advice for the writer. Some so well trenched as to appear as requirements.
Maybe they are. Things like a writer must read a lot, or a writer must put “butt-in-chair.” (I hate that phraseology, but it is what it is.) It’s possible that without those pillars of the writing life one cannot write. Certainly both make is more likely to succeed.
Yet even the dogma of those two principles leave room for a sliver of doubt in my mind.
But observation? There is no doubt. I do not care what you observe actively, but if you do not choose to observe, truly, fundamentally observe on a regular basis, you almost certainly will not be able to write. Jot down, maybe, but not write.
This is my observation of the situation.
- Posted in: Miscellany
- Tagged: fiction, nonfiction, observation, writerlife, Writing
Ty Unglebower 