Episode 6: Observing Your World

The host, Kynda Faythe, discusses the importance of observing the world and making notes for writing. She gives shout-outs to the Wichita Advanced Learning Library, Ms. Gillespie's marketing class, and Norm's Coffee Bar. She talks about the P&P Writing Society, Faythe Publishing, Inc., and their services for writers. She mentions an upcoming high school poetry contest and encourages listeners to join the journey. Kim emphasizes the need to be curious, pay attention, and write down observations. She also discusses different methods of observation and encourages listeners to be open and proactive in pursuing their goals. Welcome, welcome to the Cup of Creativity in the Literary Lounge, a place where writing doesn't have to suck. I am your host, Kynda Faythe, and today I kind of want to talk about observations, observing your world, making notes about that world, and maybe what you can do with some of those ideas that you've observed, and how this can actually help expand or enrich your writing. But, of course, you know how it goes. Before I dive into today's topic, I want to give a couple of shout-outs. First, of course, is the Wichita Advanced Learning Library, that's 711 West 2nd Street in Wichita. They provide, and actually other libraries within the city, provide an AV studio, so you can record, oh my gosh, almost anything. You can have podcasts, you can record other videos, there's collaboration spaces, there's tons of stuff that's super cool at the library. Secondly, I want to give a shout-out to Ms. Gillespie's marketing class. They have been making flyers, they have like little contests, some students are helping me out making book covers, so I'm extremely excited that they have practical experience that they can practice, so that is, I don't know, I think it's only going to become greater and greater. And then, of course, I also want to mention Norm's Coffee Bar. If you didn't know, pretty much everybody, but I'll just let you know how it works. I function on coffee. My students, my family, my friends know I need coffee, because I'm not even functional until I have like a cup or four, you know. It helps me focus, as terrifying as that is. Anyway, besides great coffee, they also give us available space. In the back, great lighting, and why or who eats in the back, you ask? It's P&P Writing Society, this is just sort of a group outside of a high school, so this is just for anybody that wants to show up. We meet on the first and third Saturdays of every month, from 12 to 1.30. We focus on working with adults, adult writers who want to like hone their craft, or just maybe just talk shop with another adult, and then from 1.30 to 3, we also focus on teens. So, these teens, most of them, the ones that show up, are not part of Newton High School. They're out of high school, they've already graduated, maybe I've got one student from another town that drives in, this is so exciting, right? And then, of course, I also want to give a shout out to my passion project, Faith Publishing, Inc. If you want to know more, of course you want to know more, go to our website. It's Faythe, F-A-Y-T-H-E, publishing.org. We are a non-profit publishing company, and we're known for fostering stories, and supporting authors, and their writing journey. I kind of like to envision this as like a two-way street. We have a whole lot of different services, such as helping students and novice writers just know the process of writing. So, we help them with that, we help with editing, we have a copywriting service, we're moving on to possible workshops, you know, like writing through just hard times in life. Anyway, we're doing all of these services, and while we're doing this, we're hoping to build money, essentially, for scholarships and for writing fellowships. You're like, what? What's a writing fellowship? A fellowship is essentially where somebody or an organization pays you to do something. I don't know about you, but I think it would be absolutely marvelous if somebody's like, hey, I'm going to pay you $800 to take three days off and just write. Oh, my gosh, that is so exciting. Oh, the possibilities are endless. I've recently said to some colleagues who are asking about faith publishing, I'm like, I want to make Central Kansas a writing mecca, and we can only do this by sharing and supporting each other. So, some of the things that are happening with Faith Publishing Inc., of course, we have a P&P Writing Society, we have copywriting, we have proofing services. I've been contacted from several colleagues in the academic world who are non-native English speakers, so they know several languages, but English is not their main one, and they needed help proofing a paper going into an academic journal, so that's pretty exciting. We have an upcoming high school statewide poetry contest. I'm really excited to see the entries that are going to be coming in. It closes on April 15th at 4 p.m., and I'll have things on my website saying that. I'm really excited about it because there's no, I don't know, there's some limitations. I would like it 20 lines or less. It can be on any topic, pretty much any style that you want. I'm going to stay away from shape poetry or blackout poetry this time, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what the teens of our state have to say. The Echoes of the Prairie, that's going to be the title of this poetry anthology. I don't know. I'm so, so excited. Of course, there's more opportunities that are going to be coming, but if you are interested in joining this journey, it's going to be a heck of a ride. Definitely contact me. Go to our website. There are some information tabs. You can scroll down to the bottom, and you can send me an email. I just think that would be fabulous. Okay. Let me gain some focus. Are you ready? Let's do the mantra because I think I need it today. Today, I will face fear. Today, I will be brave. Today, I will struggle. Today, I will grow. Today, I will get through this. Huzzah! Whenever you do huzzah, you need to say it loud, and you need to do spastic jazz hands like I do. I don't know. Maybe I'll step up my game and bring in a kazoo or something. I don't know. I love my mantra. Okay. All right, listeners. Now, let's settle down so I can wrap my brain about observing. How do we observe the world? Will Rogers, if you don't know, he was kind of a funny guy from the Midwest, from Oklahoma, I believe. He once said that there are three types of men. One that learns by reading, few who learn by observation, and the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves. Now, I have learned that forever writing can save lives. Well, or at least it can be, you know, serve as a cautionary practice to warn those other people not to pee on the electric fence. So, whatever you are observing in the world, now this is not, I don't know, there's always a spectrum. There's always a line. Be curious. You don't need to be weird and like stalk people, right? That would be awkward, and I don't condone that. But be curious. Be that little three-year-old that's like, why? Why does this work? Why does it work? Why? Who is that? Why did you say that? Constantly ask why. Don't wait for inspiration. You know, sister inspiration should come out and just like give you a pep talk or maybe a shove. You know, you don't need to wait for that. You don't need to wait for society to just kiss you on the forehead and say that it's okay to share your thoughts. Do it, right? Nobody knows your world except you. No one knows your perspective except you, right? The other one I want to mention when you're observing, pay attention. Now, I, now this may not work for everybody, but I write down everything. I have a, you know, I write down notes on my phone. I write down notes on the back of a napkin. I have a notebook. And what's fun is when you look back on those things, there's absolutely no context to it. So especially if you write down a phrase that you overheard in a conversation or something that just caught your attention for some odd particular reason, write it down. Make that observation, right? Writing is about paying attention. This helps you connect with others. And, of course, it makes us feel really, really like eager, right? I'm eager to know what you think of your world. If you want to get, let's say, academic, right? And I'm not talking about like a junior level research paper, although that's super fun. There's, let's just look like through psychology or through the arts in that area. What they look at, let's say, four different types of observation methods. Just to give you some perspective, right? There is a participant observation, right? So maybe you want to take part in that party. It's completely live. But you are aware of what's going on. So if you decide to go into that mosh pit, you know exactly what's happening in the middle, right? You know who's stomping on each other's feet. You know who are jumping that doesn't really know the song that's playing. You know, right? Then there's also the non-participant observation. That's the one that just kind of sits back on the sidelines. That's not bad. It's not bad, good or otherwise. It's just a different perspective. You're sitting back and you're just watching the world go by. There's the covert, the spying from afar. Whenever I think of this, I think of like the Mission Impossible theme song. The dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, right? So you are observing and you're spying. Again, be curious. If you were a spy, what would you be looking for? And then, of course, there's the overt. Those are the ones you're saying like, hey, by the way, I'm watching you. Said in your most creepy tone, authoritative tone, or just I would care for you tone. Yes, little Johnny, I'm totally watching you playing out in that front yard, right? Stay open. Stay open, right? Meet people. Meet new poets. Meet new friends. Look for opportunities. Now, I would say like the one, there's many, but one of the lessons that I don't feel that I was ever taught was to go out and get something. And I'm not saying that my raising or education has been negative in any way. It was just a different mindset. I was always under the impression that if you worked hard enough, if you did your best, people around you are going to be paying attention. And then that's how you're going to get attention and move on in the world. Sometimes that works. But what I've found out is that it's not working like that anymore. Anymore, if you want something, you need to go get it. So you need to stop being a sofa spot and get your butt off the couch, right? If you want to do something, if you want something to happen, you need to make it happen. You need to do that. You can't just wait for somebody to just happen to overtly or covertly watch you. They're like, oh, my gosh, they've done something amazing, right? Show the world how amazing you are. When you're observing, like I said, I take notes on everything. I keep notes. I take pictures. You can use your phone. You can doodle. You can, I don't know, I end up having a notebook that has morphed into actually a couple of novel or a couple of resources, and I just write down phrases. I write down words. I kind of feel like I am the word collector, right? Maybe a word hoarder if you really want to go there. Hmm, yes. So if I'm looking for a word or maybe something that somebody said, I write that down. So here's about three examples. One, she said she misplaced her childhood. Now, I thought that was really interesting because it's like, oh, I didn't have a childhood. She misplaced a childhood. I don't know. I find that rather intriguing, kind of like you misplaced a phone. Can you have an app that tells you where to find your childhood to help you go back to your childhood experiences? I don't know. So whenever you're thinking about something or you're reading something that catches your attention, one, if you don't have time, just write it down and go on with your life. Two, if you have that time, take that time and kind of explore why. Why was that so interesting to you, right? And then you can expand on that. All right, I've got one. He was the lowest phylum of a person. Oh, I like the science terms. Or another, colorless grimace. A colorless grimace. I think a grimace can, you know, describe a facial expression in a very weird, warped sort of, I don't know, an idea that comes to my mind is a grimace from Happy Meals, right, from the old school McDonald's. That's colorless. Oh, my gosh, I find that so sad. So essentially what I end up doing is I write everything down. I've got post-it notes. I've got notebooks. I've got my phone. I've got the backs of napkins and receipts. And then I start putting them all together in a notebook. Now, if that works for you, great. If it puts you in one document, that is okay, too, right? What I ended up doing with this is I actually use this in my creative writing classes. I have many kids that ask me to see my notebook, and I always give them the disclaimer, don't judge me too hard because I'm just observing. This is not necessarily, these are not necessarily my thoughts. These are the things that caught my attention, right? And so I ended up turning it into a resource book, which, of course, you can find on our website or on Amazon. It's called Finding Words, a Phrase Resource for the Curious. So just to give you a couple more, right? I placed Tetris in the back of a classroom as she hopes these skills can transfer to her innermost thoughts. Okay. Descendants of a People Who Refused to Die. I like that one, too. The Waitress Cried in the Bathroom. That makes me wonder why. The Impulses of a Wordless Prayer. Oh, I'm hoping that the hamster wheel in your brain is starting to churn, right? I'm hoping that these ideas are starting to come about. Once you have all of these ideas or observations at your, I guess at your fingertips in a notebook, what are you supposed to do with them? I like to literally, yeah, I guess it's, yeah, literally do retail word therapy, right? Retail therapy, shopping. I love shopping for words. I love going through my notebook and just finding something. You know, it's kind of like going through a clothing rack or, like, scrolling through Amazon or any other website, right? And you're scrolling and you're scrolling. You're like, hey, that looks kind of neat. I don't know if I need it, but I kind of like it. So with my approach to writing, it's kind of a shotgun approach, right? So whenever the shot pellets are shot, that's really wordy, they go out. They spread out all over the place. And then I like to see what I have. And then after that, I start kind of gathering them and seeing if I can put them in any kind of an order. As weird as it is, I almost kind of feel like I'm plagiarizing myself in some cases because I've already written these phrases, but I also haven't put these phrases together. So in some cases, I don't know, I feel like I'm rebelling by shopping for words. You know, I'm like, ooh, you don't give me time. I'm going to find the best words ever, right? So pick and choose what you want to say. And when you're putting your thoughts together or your phrases together or your observations together, think about the control that you have. So when writing, writing not only can you have this amazing catharsis about what you're seeing in the world or what you're feeling or experiencing in the world, you in turn are in charge of the experience that you are giving your reader, right? So I always equate this to food because, you know, food is a love language of mine. What kind of food experience, what kind of reading experience do you want to give your reader? Do you want to do like a quick happy meal or like the dollar menu or whatever, you know, the 50-cent taco day? There's nothing wrong with that because 50-cent tacos are amazing. Or do you want to go on the opposite end of the spectrum and you want to give them like a five-course meal? You know, you want to be mindful about the silverware, right? You want to be mindful about the type of story or the type of characters that develop throughout your story. You know, is the soup course going to be different than the entree course? Are you going to serve coffee after it, you know, with dessert? You get to determine how rich your story is because it is. It all takes a bit for your reader to digest our words or to digest your ideas. So it's great that you think about, you know, what you want to write about and how this is going to affect your audience. So I always think about, again, if you can't sit still or just sit quietly in a cafe or a restaurant and you're okay with being ignored, how can you observe human nature and write a story? If you are not comfortable with that, you're not ready. I will say, I will challenge everybody, go out and observe. Don't wait for people to come to you. Go out and find something that interests you, right? Find that, I don't know, I would definitely challenge people to go to a restaurant or a coffee shop or dare to be alone. There's a difference between being lonely and being alone, right? So I can be alone for a while and I'm perfectly content. That doesn't mean that I'm lonely. So I'm going to challenge everybody that when you are somewhere, I don't know, anywhere, pick up a pencil and take some notes about what's going on around you. What's going through your head? What kind of observations can you make? And besides, maybe we'll all learn how to stay away from that electric fence. So this is Kim DeFaith with Kappa Creativity in the Literary Lounge, a place where writing doesn't have to suck. I look forward to reading your next work. Until next time.