The Confluence of the Visual and the Written

The theme for today: where you work.
At first I thought of photos of reference books, chairs, stacks of manuscripts, a computer, and perhaps a pen or two.

But then I decided to compare writing to taking pictures—to observing, to paying attention to the particular, to getting the right word.

Some quotes from my writing workshops. They apply to both writing and seeing.


"For the fiction writer, judgement begins in the details he sees and how he sees them."--Flannery O'Connor

"Place conspires with the artist. We are surrounded by our own story, we live and move in it. It is through place that we put our roots."--Eudora Welty

"In the particular is contained the universal."--Chekhov

"(Writing) is like getting on the train to Louisiana. All you know at the moment is that you're getting on the train, and you're going to Louisiana. But you don't know who you're going to sit behind, or in front of, or beside; you don't know what the weather is going to be when you pass through certain areas of the country; you don't know what's going to happen; you don't know all these things, but you know you're going to Louisiana."---Ernest Gaines

So today I went to walk in Garden in the Woods—looking, observing, seeking new patterns, only knowing "I'm going to..."