Naomi Shihab Nye used to tell young poets they should write three lines a day. It’s not, she said, a huge investment of time.
What it will give you back is enormous in terms of the way you start noticing things. Writers simply get in the habit of noticing things better.
I think she’s right. If you know that you are going to sit down with a pencil and a notebook for a few minutes every day, you start looking for things that might just work in three lines. You pay a little more attention. You notice what people say and how they say it. You notice a slight gesture you had missed before. Instead of walking down the same old street thinking about an irritating colleague, you look at the neighborhood with the eye of a street photographer.
The practice of writing will change you.
The astonishing thing about the change is that it’s fun.
• Sources: Conversations with Texas Writers, edited by Frances Leonard and Ramona Cearley; Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005, p. 268.
For more on the poet, see “Marking the day: Nye,” March 12, 2022. It’s here:
https://hebertaylor.blogspot.com/2022/03/marking-day-nye.html
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