– By Beth Carter

A creative writing class I took in college many years ago has always stuck with me. The professor, Jo Van Arkel, was a talented writer and a caring teacher. She had the ability to make a rock creative (and I told her so). I took three of her classes–Expository Writing, Creative Writing I, and Creative Writing II. I adored the challenge of each class, loved writing essays, short stories, fiction, and non-fiction. But one of the exercises really stood out as a way to strengthen my writing by simply looking, listening, touching, smelling, and tasting. Here it is:

Observation Exercise

Choose a location–indoors or out–quiet or noisy. Notice everyone and everything around you. Tap into all five of your senses for an hour minimum and write everything down. (There was probably a bit more on the instruction sheet but this is the gist of it.)

Where…