Cross-posted at Fangs, Fur, & Fey

I’ve been thinking about sensitivity lately. Not political correctness or emotional balance, but that quality of fine attention and observation a writer develops. (Or should develop.)

A writer needs to pay attention. We are the magpie-voyeurs of the art world–we spy on the inside of our characters’ heads, and we are always looking in daily life for the shiny little telling detail. One of the things I always told my writing students was, “Go to a public place–a casino, a mall–and listen and look. Settle yourself with a drink and watch people. Watch human nature. Watch how they walk, listen to how they really talk, what they say and what they don’t. This will make your writing better, guaranteed.”

The effects of this include being very, very interested in everything going on around one–and, I think, having a kind face. It’s the latter I want to talk about, since I don’t advocate being what my Nana always called “a nosy parker.” No, really I don’t. Even though I advocate looking and listening in public places, I really deplore meddlesome interference. But that’s off the point.

I seem to be a repository of confidences. And not just from friends or family members. Complete strangers will turn to me in grocery-store lines and spill out their life stories. People on the street will stop me to talk. “You just have such a kind face,” they say. “It’s so easy to talk to you.”

You would not believe the stuff people tell me. A middle-aged woman in front of me at the grocery store, her arm-basket full of a quart of milk, half a dozen eggs, and a block of cheddar cheese, turned to glance at me. She had a horrific black eye. I met her eyes for a moment and she turned back around. Then she swung back to me and started to cry. She was leaving her husband of twenty years and had to tell someone. I listened until she paid and left, and when I reached the parking lot she was gone.

Walking alone down a city street at night, camera in hand, a group of young men hails me. I spend a few minutes talking. I tell them I’m a photography student–otherwise people look askance at a girl with a camera at night. Some of them slide away, others come, and one particular young man with a hairnet and light eyes begins telling me about his stepfather’s abuse. The others turn away, and when the young man’s story is finished and he lights a cigarette one of them says, “We better walk you to your car. It’s not safe out here at night.” Despite my protests–and, it must be admitted, misgivings bordering on the frantic–they do walk me to my car, laughing and joking…and, like perfect gentlemen, make sure my doors are locked and my car starts before fading into the night.

I can’t count the number of times a child in a mall or a store will look up at me, do a double-take (maybe at my nosering) and hold up a toy for examination or strike up a conversation. “Don’t bother the lady,” their parents say, but the kids grin at me and chatter away, certain they’ve found a friend. I’ve met so many lost children–and lost adults.

Once, in a casino, a drunken Japanese man spent forty-five minutes talking about a small suburb of Osaka and his parents’ house there. He would sprinkle Japanese words in his stories, hesitate to translate them into English, and go on haltingly, looking into my eyes like a long-lost friend. He spoke of homesickness and longing like a man who had plumbed the depths of both. After paying his tab and mine, he staggered out of the lounge and disappeared. I finished my club soda and decided I’d had enough for the day.

Of course, a lot of people could be lying, or just wanting some sort of human contact. But I spent a lot of time listening to people as a massage therapist, and I’ve learned the sound of a confidence given. I’ve learned the sound of a secret people tell when their defenses are down, because they have to talk to someone.

Some of these stories, names and characteristics changed of course, are the germs for stories. Others I keep locked up behind my eyes, sometimes feeling the weight of each one like a stone. I wonder what happened to those people, if they regretted telling me or if they felt liberated by confessing something to a stranger. I wonder if that’s why we read fiction sometimes, to hear a stranger’s confession and share the intimacy of another life.

I wonder if people talk to me because I, as a writer, am inveterately interested in human behavior and human stories. I’ve examined my face in a mirror, trying to pin down what they see that makes them willing to tell me things they would hesitate to whisper to a therapist or a lover. I don’t see anything but the big nose that fills me with grief and the weak eyes that necessitate Coke-bottle lenses.

The sensitivity I’m referring to is the ability to empathize, I think. It’s the ability to feel the joy and pain of others as keenly as your own. It is invaluable to a writer, but like every gift, it comes with a price–you must learn how to protect yourself. It’s a dance between vulnerability and self-defense. There are people who look for that openness so they can slip a knife in–or siphon off precious emotional energy you need to fuel your art.

This sensitivity can also be a distraction, easily utilized when a writer doesn’t want to buckle down and bust out the pages. It’s easy to think that the work can wait until tomorrow because something interesting is happening outside the window. Writers are generally like magpies–you never know when a shiny object might be good for the story you’re building. But you can also get trapped in the shiny, just like you can be tricked by your own openness and empathy into not observing proper caution in Certain Situations.

Like, say, dealing with a group of obviously drug-dealing young men at night on a city corner. Not my smartest move, you know.

But doesn’t it make a great story?