Engage, Listen, and Learn — Expand Your World Epi 25

Engage, Listen and Learn — Expand Your World Episode 25

Engage, listen, and learn is how you can greatly expand your world as a writer. This is the main topic of my latest The Djuna Shellam Podcast Episode 25.

Let me explain…

Writers, no matter who they are, can only live one real life. Right? There are their real lives and their writer’s lives. They produce fiction, nonfiction, or both. If there’s nothing else but a writer’s own experiences from which to draw and create believable stories and characters in fiction, their writing world can get pretty small and limited pretty fast—as will their writing. A writer of nonfiction who has only their own life to use for ideas may simply run out of things to write.

Then There Are Those Writers…

Some writers lead exciting, varied, and interesting lives from which they can endlessly conjure exciting and interesting work. I will submit that most writers do not. Each day, week, are much the same, day after day, week after week, month after month. For someone leading an ordinary, predictable life, it can become quite a task trying to think of something interesting and unusual to integrate into a project.

I’m the second kind of writer. Each week is a lot like the one before it. I don’t mind, and rather like it that way, but it limits my life experiences. The way in which I’ve expanded my world and “my” life experience is by talking to strangers. It wasn’t a grand plan or anything. It’s just something I do, and I learned how to use my compulsion to talk to strangers to enhance my writing.

Talk To Strangers

We’ve all been raised to not talk to strangers. For kids, that’s a sound rule. For me the adult, well, it’s a rule. I don’t like rules. Sometimes I think I talk to strangers just to break the old ‘don’t talk to strangers‘ rule. Fun Rick Springfield song, by the way.

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Nonetheless, I’ll strike up a conversation with some random person and before I know it, they’re telling me about their lives and things that have happened or are happening to them. They tell me things they would likely never tell me if I asked them because… I listen. I let them tell me what they need to tell me.

Also, I rarely ask questions because then I’m directing them to tell me what I want to know. When I let them talk, they tell me what they want me to know. When I do ask questions, I’m careful not to intrude or be too personal, and then… I shut up. I stay present and really listen because as I’m listening, I’m learning interesting things, and I’m quietly filing. Filing? Yes, I’m filing the conversation away for future use. Future writing use.

Let’s Be Clear…

However, I’m in no way suggesting you should take people’s stories and present them as your creative work. No. What I’ve often found listening (and I mean, really listening) to people’s stories, is that they’ve opened me to an experience or a life that is so far from my own. Or they’ve told me something about something I could have never imagined or learned about on my own. That expands my world greatly, but also provides fodder for future stories or characters. Strangers’ stories are often like wonderful secret keys to creativity. But more important than anything, I think, is that when you gain your ideas from actual conversations, your writing will be stronger and feel authentic.

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WAIT!

I almost forgot! In this week’s Episode 25 I mentioned an artist, but I failed to mention his name! Ron Adamson. Check him out HERE.