Ep 210: Cultivate Curiosity for Your Best Writing Life, Pillar One

[210] Dani Shapiro writes, “When I think of the wisest people I know, they share one defining trait: curiosity” (213, Still Writing). As she notes this connection between wisdom and curiosity, she continues, “They turn away from the minutiae of their lives—and focus on the world around them. They are motivated by a desire to explore the unfamiliar. They are drawn toward what they don't understand. They enjoy surprise” (213). I love how she connects surprise and curiosity. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi makes that same connection, as you’ll see shortly. But before we get to that, let me establish my own connection: that curiosity is one of three pillars of your best writing life...along with creativity and productivity. Curious Writers Bring More to Their Work As curiosity becomes a daily practice, our writing will benefit, because curiosity serves as a driving force to producing captivating content and developing a writer who has things to say. Nourish curiosity and you’ll have a lively imagination drawing from a vast and ever-expanding library of ideas. Each day, even the smallest flash of wonder fans the flame of creativity. If we agree with Dani Shapiro that curious people focus on the world around them with a desire to explore the unfamiliar—drawn toward what they don’t understand—we gather clues for how we, too, can cultivate curiosity to live out our best writing life. If you’ve lost your sense of wonder and dampened curiosity, don’t worry. You can recapture it, funneling into your work a newfound delight in the world around you, in yourself, and in others. If you happen to be by nature a curious lifelong learner, lucky you! Continue to explore new ways to cultivate it further to become even more curious and pour what you discover into your writing projects. Develop Curiosity Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Creativity writes: “[T]he first step toward a more creative life is the cultivation of curiosity and interests, that is, the allocation of attention to things for their own sake…. Creative individuals are childlike in that their curiosity remains fresh even at ninety years of age; they delight in the strange and the unknown. And because there is no end to the unknown, their delight also is endless.” (346, Creativity) Did you hear his suggestions? Allocate “attention to things for their own sake.” “Delight in the strange and unknown.” It’s similar to what Dani Shapiro was saying: even the old in age are young at heart as they “explore the unfamiliar” and let themselves be “drawn toward what they don’t understand.” Curious people learn something new every day. Search, Capture, Ask My mom moved from the American Midwest to a coastal town in the South and became captivated by the flora and fauna of the area. She bought a telephoto lens so she could capture photos of the birds that seem so exotic to her. She grew up and lived most of her life with mourning doves, cardinals, robins, starlings, swallows, and red-winged blackbirds. Now she’s delighting in what are, for her, “strange and unknown” species. She’s “exploring the unfamiliar” as she snaps photos and looks up in a guidebook the names of birds that turn out to be wood storks, ibises, great blue herons, green herons, and anhingas. She shares them with her Facebook followers posting one photo after another along with thoughtful captions further modeling this curiosity that comes so naturally to her. My mom is by nature curious and developed it as a journalist, rooting out stories everywhere she goes. But you don’t need to be a trained journalist to ask the questions popping into your head and to search for answers: