“Above
all,” Roald Dahl advised writers, “watch
with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets
are always hidden in the most unlikely places.”
I
grew up in Africa. When I was six, my daddy taught my brother and me to
observe. Motion in a tree that was otherwise still could be a troop of monkeys.
At dusk we trained our eyes to spot guinea fowl roosting in a tree—dinner for
the next day. A wiggly motion in the grass near the path could be a poisonous snake.
In the elephant grass higher than our heads alongside the path where we walked,
blowing noises could signal the approach of a deadly Cape buffalo or a lion on
the prowl. In Africa, being observant could be a matter of life or death.
Alexander McCall Smith writes fascinating books set Botswana,
Africa, called The
No.
1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.
The heroine of these novels is Mma Ramotswe, Botswana’s first lady detective.
Here’s
a quote about observing from his novel, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive: ‘“Mma Ramotswe…often saw thing which other
people missed…That’s why I have found my calling she said to herself; …I am
lucky enough to be able to notice
things…(Her cousin had trained her) to keep her eyes open, to notice all the
little things that were happening when one did something as simple as go for a
walk in the bush. Here, along the path, would be the tracks of the animals that
had passed that way; there were the tiny prints of a duiker, the skittish
miniature buck with its delicate miniature hooves; there were the signs of the
labours of the dung beetle, pushing its trophy, so much bigger than itself, leaving
those marks in the sand. And there, look, somebody had come this way while he
was eating and had thrown the maize cob down on the ground, not all that long
ago because the ants had not yet come to take possession of it….The habit (of
observing) had been engrained in Mma Ramotswe’s mind. At the age of ten, she
had known by heart the number plate of virtually every car in Mochudi (her home
town) and had been able to say who had driven in the direction of Gabarone (the
capitol city) on any morning. “You have eyes like mine,” said the cousin. “And
that is a good thing.”’
The
American College Dictionary defines the word observe as:
1)
to
see, perceive, or notice.
2)
to
regard with attention so as to see or learn something.
3)
to
watch, view or note…for some special purpose.
4)
To
witness, implying paying strict attention
So,
let’s be aware. Pay attention.We see a multitude of images a day.
Orson Scott Card said:
“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers
are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” The trick,
then, is to spot them—to be aware.
Observe,
using all your five senses: seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling. Use
your sixth sense, which is really a combination of some of the first five. A
“seventh sense” could be called our spiritual sense—what God speaks into our
souls and lays on our hearts to put into written form.
Recently
on a gorgeous, sunny day in a beautiful, but lonely garden, I found myself
thinking, “This would be the perfect setting for a tragedy.” The contrast of
the setting and the dreadful event would have heightened the tension, I think.
A
coppery-blonde friend of mine has eyes the color of south-sea waves above a
white-sand floor. I now have a character
named Rose who has those same aqua of eyes and burnished hair.
Lisa Wingate, an author of Christian novels, admonishes
writers: While you’re walking the
writer-road, be aware, be in the moment, don’t close your eyes even for an
instant. Wherever you go in life, there are nuggets of story along the trail. Sometimes
you’ll see them coming; sometimes you’ll stumble over them. Pause long enough
to pick them up and examine them. Your writer’s mind can take it from there.
Where
have you been? What have you
heard or smelled or tasted? What have you seen? What has the Lord brought to your attention to commit to print?
Conclusion:
Incidentally, God doesn’t just “see” you; He observes you.
“The Lord…observes the sons
of men; his eyes examine them” (Psalm 11:4 NIV). Nothing escapes His notice. A
poet once said, “His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me.” In your
joys and in your sorrows, He sees you
and takes notice of your struggles
and your accomplishments. Take joy in our Lord as He guides your writing life
and give you ideas for articles, poems, devotionals, stories and novels. Just
don’t miss them when He shows them to you.
***Write for FIVE minutes about something that you observed recently. A place you’ve been to; a conversation you overheard, a happenstance that caught your attention.
