Details

It seems that every time Donald Murray does a reading exercise in his book he comes up with something interesting. Even if it’s a subject that I find incredibly mundane he still has the ability to keep me interested in what he is saying.

Of course it helps that many of his stories involve his days serving at war but it is the way he brings it to life that impresses me. He is able to put down on paper what I can picture so vividly in my mind but fail to do justice to when I write it out. My mind is teeming with ideas, pictures and experiences trying to find their way to paper but when they do so end up completely flat. There always seems to be something that gets lost in translation between my mind and what I create.

I think above anything else it is Murray’s attention to detail that helps him to write so well. We can all try to pay attention the best we can to our memories but will not be able to compare to him in that regard. I think it takes a great deal of experience to be able to fully analyze what we have in our head, take from it all we can and then express it in the best way possible. I can do the exact same exercise he does, after having experienced the same thing and I would not even come close to the same level of detail.