One Way to Come up with Descriptions

Yesterday was one of those creative days — or someone had slipped me something.

Everything looked like something else. I drove past a river and was sure I saw a grizzly bear dipping his toe in the water. It turned out to be an enormous stump, burnt orange from decay, that had no doubt been there for decades.

Up the road I thought I spotted two, 20-foot crocodiles coming down from the top of a tree. I knew it couldn't be true and didn't even stop to figure it out.

What Does it Look Like?

Now that I write this, I know why I'm seeing odd associations. I'm reading a book of short stories by Annie Proulx — one of the best writers out there in my humble opinion — and she always wow's me with her descriptions. Just the dozens of ways she described clouds in this last book has left me breathless.

It reminded me of an exercise a writing instructor gave us in college. He told us that we should constantly be looking at things and coming of associations and descriptions. For example, a branch might look like arthritic fingers or the outstretched arm of a mother to a child. He told us to do this exercise forever. He said it would be hard at first, but would get easier.

It was hard! I practice it once in a while when I'm driving. But as I've been reading these Annie Proulx stories, I've desperately wanted to get back at it and writer better descriptions.

Hallucinations

So I've been practicing, and I think my subconscious (or muse) is also in on the exercise. Even when I think I've stopped trying to come up with descriptions and have turned to something mundane like taxes, the muse is still at it — spotting grizzly bears and crocodiles.

Last night I about jumped out of my skin when I thought I spotted two eyes — 3 feet apart —staring out of the shadows of a fir tree. I didn't check it out, I just locked the door and told my muse to start making some less scary associations.