“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust
What wonderful words of wisdom from one writer to another! And how beautifully Proust proved his point in his own masterwork Remembrance of Things Past!
So often in writing, we can find ourselves stuck in a rut—has this happened to you? We write ourselves into a corner, or a character doesn’t seem all that alive, or our plot seems clumsy and jerry-rigged. Our story and characters can seem flat and sluggish.
What to do? What to do?
Proust has the antidote!
We need to approach our work with “new eyes.”
We may have been mired in lackluster observations and language, or given our characters predictable reactions. We need to push beyond all this by approaching our stories and writing with a fresh, curious mind—with “new eyes”
When we do this, we take a “real voyage of discovery,” and how exciting this can be. We unearth things about our characters we didn’t know. We find new ways to shift our plot in a different direction and suddenly, new adventures and ideas appear. We may even find ourselves creating subplots and new motor characters which add zest and a bit of mystery to our tales.
Proust also reminds us that we don’t need to go too far afield for inspiration. We don’t need to travel to exotic locales to spice up our stories. There are wonders closer to home to be seen and described. They’re right outside our doorstep just waiting for us.
So let’s take a tip from that extraordinary observer, Marcel Proust, and find “fresh eyes” as we all write on!
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