"If a writer stops observing he is finished," Ernest Hemingway once told George Plimpton. "But he does not have to observe consciously nor think how it will be useful. Perhaps that would be true in the beginning. But later everything he sees goes into the great reserve of things he knows or has seen."
A writer's skill in engaging an audience is directly related to his power of observation. Without this critical know-how, writers will appear naive at best and manipulative at worst. The writer's job is to report what he experiences unblemished, showing readers the best and worst of human nature.
A writer's skill in engaging an audience is directly related to his power of observation. Without this critical know-how, writers will appear naive at best and manipulative at worst. The writer's job is to report what he experiences unblemished, showing readers the best and worst of human nature.
