If writing is selection then literature is like curation. This is easy to notice about storytelling. From an infinite stream of events and evergrowing crowds of people people, the writer plucks out a chosen few to construct their narrative. But this is also true at the elemental level of words and sentences. Of all the action and detail available for depiction in a scene scene, the writer selects an extreme few. This is also true at the elemental level of words and sentences. says very little. Good literature distills from life the beautiful and the resonant that is normally diluted in the a sea of mundanity in ordinary life. mundanity.

Reading good books is practice in looking through this lens at your own life and life. Practice in noticing the beauty that hides in plain sight. This even Even more so if you try writing about it as well. You need nothing but experience of living and the words in your head. Cast your attention out into the world like a fishing line and wait until you notice something. A tug from the subconscious. Something stirring your curiosity. What is it? Is it the sunlight? The colors, the sound of the breeze? The oddly pleasing way the shapes arrange themselves?

Art is a means to capture for capturing these moments. Take a picture, draw the scene, or put it in words. Whatever you’re producing What you produce is an observation not of objective reality but of subjective experience. From the vastness of experience you’ve saved a little treasure, like Like the jarring of a firefly, you’ve taken from the vastness a little treasure so that the magic of that moment might endure a little longer. Something for the future, for yourself and to share with others. But you’re also doing something else. now. You’re enjoying the act of living.