Practice

Looking all around, I finally spot my subject. A young man, who I've seen many times before. He walks back and forth, interacting with everyone around him, shifting his weight from foot to foot. At first I would conclude a nervous-like quality about his stance, but no, that's not it. An air of flirtation, comfort, and creativity surround him. Almost like one of those "Ora's" you hear about people giving off, but you never see. From observing him, I'm learning a lot about his mannerisms. His hands swing in back of his body, then back to the front where they both snap followed by his fist meeting his open hand in a smack -repeated over and over. Walking from person to person asking for help or participation in the film they appear to be making, he walks with almost a swagger from one leg to the other with confidence. Although his clothes seem grungy and baggy, they work perfectly with his creative-i don't care- personality.
Stalking my target- is like the perfect warm up, for your writing. It forces you to use adjectives to correctly depict your subject. The reader will not understand or be able to create a picture of the the person you are describing if the words you use are not vivid or clear. Critical thinking, like in this activity, gets your mind warmed up. This "exercise" (pun intended...) will help you gain writers muscle as it encourages metaphors, and clarity to be used. You might think of this exercise as practice, before you write. Even my brief description above challenged my mind to think back to yesterday and write about my subject. It was my warm up for the rest of this blog. A creative warm up like this one helps your own creative thinking process get started. Similar to warm up journal entries in class, stalking someones actions and having to describe them in detail gets you in the mood to write. This stalking activity= stretching before you go for a run. The warm up or the stretch happen when your stretching your mind to think of the perfect descriptive words, or warming up your creative mind by challenging you to use metaphors. As much as this warms up you as a writer, it also strengthens your ability to create imagery for your reader. You have to draw them a picture using your words, and if you mess up- they might not understand.