Life and Writing - Be Aware

Life is what happens to me when I'm not writing about it. That's the way I feel.

All of my writing, without exception, has to do with my life. It can be the characters that I write and who have a lot in common with the people I know. It can be the plot ideas from things that happened to me or people I know. It can be facts I put in articles of things I know and experienced. The sum of my experiences is always portrayed in my writing somehow.

That's why one should always be aware of what he/she is going through. Aware of their surroundings, of how people behave and talk, note people's facial expressions and their mannerism. Views, sights, colors, smells, are all things we should notice to become better writers.

So far we talked about the action in your life. What about the passive experiences - what you read for example, interesting news articles, a new science discovery, a strange thing that happened in a different country, are also things you should pay attention to.

All that can help in building plot lines, characters, articles. There's nothing like writing a great knowledgeable article, but then also adding some pepper to it from an unexpected source.

We can never tell what experience can become our next winning story or article. One can wake up in the morning, watch the tree branches from their bedroom window, notice as they sway in the wind and come terribly close to the power lines. The ideas from just this little things are vast: one can choose to write an article about the necessity to prune tree next to power lines, another can choose to write a short story about a fire caused by a tree falling on a power line and the struggle of the protagonist to recover, and so on. So from two minutes of waking up in the morning I've supplied you with a few days' worth of writing. It's up to you now.

Notice, be aware, and write.