Friday’s Spark – People Watching
This weeks Friday Spark is from Journaling the Journey – Meeting Yourself on the Page with a Writing Practice by Deb Cooperman
Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces. She said the man in the
gabardine suit was a spy. I said "Be careful his bowtie is really a camera
…”
People-watching is a delightful pastime, and it’s one a writer ought to
indulge in often. Like Paul Simon’s characters in America we make up stories
about the people we see all the time, without really thinking about it.
Waiting for a friend in a restaurant recently, I noticed a man in a
business suit across the bar –drinking a beer, munching on an appetizer and
glancing at the television above the bar from time to time. He’s a businessman,
I thought. He’s away from home and probably didn’t want to order room service
again, but he’s clearly not comfortable sitting in a restaurant alone. Or maybe
he’s meeting a lover – he sure seems edgy – and he keeps glancing around the
room. Is he on the lookout for people who might discover his soon-to-be
infidelity?
My story lines went up in smoke as a woman with a little boy
who was dressed in soccer gear came rushing up to him. “I’m so sorry we’re
late,” she said, “the game started late and …" "And I got a goal
Daddy!
So he wasn’t a business man, or a soon-to-be rendezvousing lover.
And he was not a spy with a camera in his bowtie. But any of those options could
have been true.
If you think you have nowhere to start with your
writing, go do some people watching. Look around you and see how many life
stories you can make up. If you write down what you notice – and what you make
up about what you notice – you’ll have a rich collection of possibilities to
draw from for your writing practice.
Get out and look around. Play games
with the faces. Tell their stories. Tell yours.
And enjoy revealing
yourself on the page….
Find more Sparkers by Deb at www.coachingtoys.com/journalingthejourney.html
Visit Debs blog at www.debcooperman.blogs.com/entertaininginfinity
Sparkers – Journaling the Journey © 2006 Deb Cooperman for Coaching Toys Inc – Sparkers, all rights reserved.
We’d love to hear your response to this Sparker – What role does writing serve in your personal journey?
