Pay Attention

Today I decided to try out one of Nicole Mazzarella's suggestions for getting your writing off the ground; namely, pay attention to conversations, people, locations, and random facts and you'll soon find yourself with the start of a great story or an idea for a character. In each of my classes or even in conversations with my friends, when something they said appealed to me, I wrote it down and kept a running free writing log. During class (when I perhaps should have been taking notes on the lecture) I wrote down short profiles of my classmates based on what I saw in a two second window. Here are just a few of the quotes and scenes I came up with:

• "I've kissed 31 boys. Usually about one a week."
• "He was 4'10", talked with a voice like a parrot, and when he wasn't talking he was singing Michael Jackson songs."
• He grabbed a golf club and prepared to swing as the masked figures ran down the hall.
• "My mom is deaf but my grandma worked with her really hard so she could learn English. Being deaf has made her a very visual person."
• Gold leaves flapped wearily against a cold, iron sky.
• "It's all about the gold. 20 karat gold."
• "I used to tell my students we in the U.S. had the safest food supply in the world."
• Professor Lammons left work early on Friday to drive the sewing machine down to Salt Lake City.
• "They had to go to the hospital with $700 to pick up their baby."
• He was smiling and laughing right up until the moment his toe caught on the last step of the stairs and he tripped forward, sprawling, his books, papers, and even one of his shoes flying up into the air.
• "He bruised his thigh right down to the bone and now he walks like a bowlegged penguin."
• When she took the bandage off, there was a maroon, "v" shape left where the blood had pooled beneath her skin around the metal fastener.
• Her bottom lip was always slightly protruding and today that was accentuated by the forward thrust of her head, her hunched shoulders, though the view of her face was obscured by the short, brunette locks falling softly across her face.
• "Seventeen percent of school children are obese."
• She leaned down and pressed her lips to his broken hand, whispering, "There, I kissed it better."
• She walked into class snapping her fingers and bobbing her head, sending her chocolate curls bouncing like dozens of loose slinkies down her back.

See? It's not hard. All you really have to do is LOOK.