Find Your Own Beauty

If you want to write about something beautiful, you have to be able to see it. A creative life is open to the beauty that surrounds. And most especially, the beauty no one else notices. This gift of sight is something we must cultivate as writers, painters, photographers, poets, play-doh artists. What's most magical of all, is to use this sightedness toward human beings.

I am in awe of photographer Rick Guidotti, who left his high-profile, high-fashion photography job to capture the beauty others did not see. He began taking pictures of individuals with albinism, Sturge-Weber syndrome, and other genetic disorders. Rick travels the world capturing the beauty of these people, and promoting their dignity through the organization he founded, Positive Exposure.

Find an overlooked scene, object, animal, person. Write about this thing others (ignoring their higher, creative sight) call ugly.