Creatively Writing the World Around You

Creatively Writing the World Around You

Last week I wrote about finding inspiration to get your writing started. Below is an excerpt that I wrote this week. An excerpt to what I’m not sure yet, but some ideas are starting to form so I’ll just have to see where it goes.

I sat, staring out the window, watching the cold rain dampen the world outside. The mid-afternoon drizzle had turned to rain and the drops had gathered along the gutter’s edge of our neighbor’s house, shining like little lights on the otherwise gloomy day.

Suddenly, a small flock of sparrows flew into view. They were flying low over the brown, grassy hill behind the houses, and as they went, others sprang up out of the grass to join them on their journey. Had something startled them? Had word spread from others of a spot farther up the greenbelt with some tasty treats? Or maybe they’d simply had enough of the rain and were heading to more protective covering in the nearby grove of evergreens.

Questions I would never have answers to, but sitting in the comfort of my warm dry house in front of a small fire I was content to just wonder.

Now, odds of the above staying just as written when I include it in a bigger story are pretty low. In fact, I already rewrote a couple of the sentences before posting it here. In this case, it’s not so much the wording that I feel is important but the scene I’m trying to convey.

…the world around us is full of stories just waiting to be told

One small moment in life that could lead to 3 very different stories.

The above scene is in fact, something that I witnessed while sitting in my living room enjoying the kind of quiet that only exists in my house during nap time, on a good day when they actually nap. It goes back to the idea that inspiration can come from anywhere at any time. I had only been looking out the window for a moment, trying to see how hard the rain was falling, when the birds flew past. I also didn’t really think about where they were going. The staring and wondering were both added for dramatic effect. That’s the joy of writing, taking the ordinary and going one, or many, step(s) further.

There are a lot of directions that I could go with this excerpt. Maybe the person I’m writing about had been sitting there pondering where their future was going when these birds suddenly appear and serve as a kind of metaphor of how they feel: swept up by those around them and unsure of the destination.

I could go a totally different direction and change the birds to a bunch of fairies. If I keep it placed in the “real” world, perhaps it freaks the viewer out and she takes off after them to see if she is hallucinating or they are real. Of if it is a “fantasy” world then maybe the way in which they are flying gives some foreshadowing of what is to come next.

Past Assignments

I always had a lot of creative writing assignments in school. In sixth grade, we had to write our own myths to explain a natural phenomenon. I wrote mine about why the ocean has waves. I don’t remember what the assignment was, but a friend of mine in high school wrote a funny short story about what happens to that one sock that always seems to disappear from the dryer. Very different stories, but both were written about everyday things. Maybe you dreaded your writing assignments back in the day, but they could be useful idea jumping off points today.

Getting Outside Help

My sister-in-law enjoys writing so for Christmas a few years ago we got here Rory’s Story Cubes. You roll the dice and they give you 9 images that you then use to create a story. This can be played as a game with others where you start a story and then each person adds to the story, or you can use it to help for those times when you are stuck and just need to get your brain in writing mode. My friends and I used to do something when we were in school and passed the story around via email.

The point of this rambling is that the world around us is full of stories just waiting to be told; you just have to pause for a moment to see them. This is as much a reminder to me as advice to anyone that might read this.