Writing depends on our willingness to observe closely and our ability to allow ourselves to engage emotionally with what we are observing. So often, though, we don’t remember to take time to look around rather than look only at our screens because of the mad crush of email, texts, instant messages, Facebook posts, tweets, and pins.

We spend a lot of time absorbed in product advertisements and YouTube videos, let alone the hundreds of photos our friends, colleagues, and families post of their good times, delicious homemade and restaurant meals, antics of children and pets, inspirational quotes, and political thoughts. We stay glued to our phones and tablets —  when stuck in traffic or on buses or trains or even while just walking. We are always taking in information and telling others how we liked the information they sent.

And even when we take the time to engage in quietly making observations of the world outside our screens and allowing those observations to foster associations to memories and concerns we have, we easily grow critical and untrusting of our ability with words. Feeling unsure of whether our writing can rise to the occasions life has thrown our way, we fail to successfully access the creative writing parts of ourselves — poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction alike.

How then can we increase our feelings of love for writing?

By pausing and giving our attention, even if for a moment, to what is outside our very own windows. Observation, it turns out, is a form of love, which is necessary for writing. I enjoy this journal entry in which the poet Louise Bogan offers the words of her friend Elizabeth Meyer who was paraphrasing William Butler Yeats on the connection of writing and love:

And the poems depended on the ability to love (Yeats kept saying this, to the end.) The faculty of loving. A talent. A gift. We must always be a little in love.

While I was browsing the Internet (yes, consuming information) for words on the topic of needing to love in order to write, I found this Swedish proverb, “Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies.” These words make me remember that as writers, even when we must affirm the saddest of events, we are drawn beyond our own boundaries to become part of what else exists.  Originating our own observations leads us to reveal what is at the bottom of our individual minds and hearts and is essential for keeping the writing mind open, for helping us stay connected to the love we have of writing.

Another quote about love I came across that I think can help writers is from author James D. Bryden who believed:

Love does not die easily. It is a living thing. It thrives in the face of all of life’s hazards, save one: neglect.

For me, one of the things this quote means is that we must not neglect time to engage in our original observations if we are to nurture the well-spring of love necessary for writing (and living among others).

To help you commit a short period of time each day to making the kind of observations that will keep your writing mind open and active, I’d like to offer some samples of what I have written days I took the time to write what I see as I look outside my window or while I am walking. My hope is that you will see I allowed myself to let the images that wanted to come forward bring out thoughts and reflections, memories and questions.

Today the sky is blue and grey, white and a tinge of pink. That tinge of pink–happy times that color everything brighter, sweeter, even what is here but in memory. And with that sweet brightness comes new energy, love.

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It’s raining as I am sitting in SeaTac airport awaiting my husband’s flight home. Happy reunions abound, bright colors against the grey skies outside and the metal baggage carousels where I sit. I like to imagine a reunion with my son. What would I say? That’s what I will write today. That is how I will connect with his essence now that he has died.

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Sunshine and frost on March 4. Two days until my birthday. Is this the way I sometimes feel inside–warm memories, cold loss?

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Been in the garden today, pruning vines. Sweet plump berries, harsh thorns, green, green leaves. Love, loss, memories.

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This early morning where I live:
Wind rattling the windows, whistling through the door.
Get up, get up, remember everything changes, everything moves on.

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It doesn’t take much time at all to observe and then to write down the specifics of our observations and then to associate to an experience, thought, or question. Most of us are so often at a keyboard or a device we can type or text on that we can easily fold observation writing practice into our days. The trick is to trust the images that attract our attention and to stay with specifics when we write what we observe.

I like remembering what the poet William Carlos Williams wrote in his poem “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

Find what is important–the way the world allows you to project onto it and embody, release, and make public who you are in the deepest parts of yourself. Whether you are writing prose or poetry, start this practice right now and you will see it pay off in your writing (and your life).

Another piece of advice I like to remember is from Anita Barrows when she writes about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke‘s “declaration that our greatest summons is really to see the things of this world.” She says she has learned, “The world is because it is beheld and loved into being.” We might do well to repeat, as she does, “I am in the world to love the world.”

Start today. Right now. Post the lines you write from your moments observing as comments below this article. It will be my delight to read and respond to them.