Every Minute of Every Day

 

According to Nora Ephron, famous screenwriter and essayist, she uses every minute of every day as fodder for her work as she explained in an interview with Olivia Stren which appeared in the November 12, edition of The Globe and Mail in the Books section on page 20.

And that is a good habit for other writers, such as speech writers, as well. Things, such as statistics, features stories (such as this one) and other bits and bits that can make your work come to life are all around you just waiting to be used in your next speech or presentation.

Some of it you might be able to use right away while other things should be filed away on your computer or old fashioned notebook somewhere. A good example of this is a little sparrow I saw hopping up and down in front of a discarded mirror leaning against a wall alongside a half-burned out building.

I stood watching the little bird flapping its wings as it hopped up and down in front of its own image for two or three minutes at a time and then running around behind the mirror to try and see where the other bird was I guess.

Just how I am going to use this illustration I'm not quite sure yet, but in some presentation, sometime, somewhere I know this little bird will pop up to illustrate some point.

Things like this are literally all around you. I just learned for example while reading an alternative news magazine, Common Ground, published in Vancouver B.C., Canada that although relatively few people are aware of it there is not just one species of bee that pollinates flowers and other plants but actually there are some 20,000 different species worldwide – 800 of which live in Canada. That little bit of information, carefully filed away could prove very useful one day in some presentation or conversation.


Other examples of being surrounded by potentially useful ideas to use in writing and speaking are two towering climbing cranes used in the  construction of the new Port Mann Bridge in Vancouver. These two cranes soar hundreds of feet above the bridge neck over the Fraser River -- which is already 200 or so feet above the river -- and look somewhat like huge dandelions with their slender stalks and flowes ( in this case the operator's cabin) on the top.
Passing these day after day the thought one day popped into my mind that the trust put in these slender cranes by the operators is a good illustration of the definition of faith: "…the assured expectation of things hope for."

So Nora Ephron, and the many other writers who also do this are on to a really good idea.