Sunday Scribblings on Monday
I wrote this for Sunday Scribblings on Write Anyway, but I thought it would be a good contemplation post to put here. Let me know what you think.
On to Sunday Scribbling 137 - Stranger
When I first saw the word ’stranger’, I thought the natural ’stranger as in a person I don’t know’. But immediately after that, I thought about the movie ‘Stranger than Fiction’. (I highly recommend it. Very funny - and a bit head-trippy if you’re a writer.) That naturally led me down the path of what it is like to live life as a writer…
I think writer’s lives are stranger than other people’s lives. Whether they realize it or not is another matter. And I’m not saying that non-writers can’t have strange lives as well; I’m painting broad strokes with a big brush for this one.
Writers notice things and, if nothing else prevents them, they play out different scenarios to everyday things. Say my morning bagel drops on the floor with the cream cheese side down. I don’t just curse and pick it up. As a writer, I think about reading the Bitter Butter Battle by Dr. Seuss. I then think about how weird it would be if something on my dirty floor reacted with the cream cheese giving it life. My bagel would then sprout cream cheese legs and wander off toward the pantry to liberate all its friends.
Don’t worry; I’ll stop now.
Writers’ lives may not be inherently different, but the way their minds work can make their lives stranger than ‘the usual’. Of course, it’s all in the eye of the beholder.
If a painter told me about wanting to paint every leaf on a tree to make a gigantic mosaic, I would consider that painter to be stranger than me…
November 17th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
lol, i was sure only i thought that way….
and the of the bagel walking away, priceless!
November 19th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Haha. I’m glad you enjoyed it.