conversation is an engine

A Photo. A Paragraph. A Word That Helps You Understand.

I’ve stumbled at least twice over this useful blurb about writing. I’m not the only one to find and re-find it: a number of Twitterers keep tweeting this particular blog post. It’s from the Australian writer Charlotte Wood who wrote a guest blog back in 2011 for an Australian philosopher I enjoy: Damon Young (‘The Write Tools’ #32 – Charlotte Wood). Ms. Wood wrote about her process for producing novels and how at a certain point in the process she starts to take photos as a way of capturing detail. The entire post is worth your time, but I keep rereading this paragraph:

Iris Murdoch said that paying attention is in itself a moral act. I think this is true – it is hard to dismiss someone if you listen very carefully and watch them, and enter into what they truly believe. I think this is what my photographs and notebooks are telling me: remember not to skate over the surface of an imagined thing or person or act, but really sit, and go quiet, and listen. Pay attention to everything there in the frame, and then also perhaps wonder about what is not there, and why. I think a commitment to paying attention is perhaps as good a way as any to try to understand the world. And trying to understand the world is why I read, and why I write.

Ms. Wood’s attention to detail is a source of inspiration to me. And I like how reading, writing and observing are all helping serve her goal of understanding.

###

Image credit: Kateoplis via 2headedsnake