LESSON: People Watching-The Education of The Eye: Staring

Writing Toward Home - Georgia Heard

Go to a public place: a coffee shop, an airport, a neighborhood grocery store, the subway (refer to Week 4: Lesson 1). Bring your notebook. Think of it as a camera. Be a word photographer of people: their shoes, hair, smells, what they eat, how the speak. Record it. Make up stories about the people you see. Invent their lives from the details you have absorbed: where they live and work, who lives with them, their history. Try to notice everything. Pay special attention to people you would ordinarily never notice, who live invisible lives. Pour your observations into words.