Month: January 2020

How to tell a personal story (without boring the readers)

Neera

It is cold, windy and dark. A few people are sitting around a fire. They are eating and drinking and talking when suddenly a young man gets up and speaks in a loud voice, “Do you know what happened to me today when I went hunting?” Everyone stop whatever they are doing and look at him. The young man doesn’t say till someone asks. “What? What happened to you?” Everyone is all ears wanting to know what happened.

Can you picture the scene in your mind?

It is happening 50,000 years ago, where a group of humans is sitting around a fire and a young man is about to tell a story and everyone wants to hear it.

The setting might be different, the people might be different but human desire to listen to stories hasn’t changed.

We, the humans, know how to tell a story since cave days. The art of telling a story is still the same since humans invented the language.

We all have the skill to tell stories. It is inbuilt in us.

The only problem is we have not been practicing them enough. That is because we don’t have campfires every night anymore.

But we have other means. We talk on phones, we interact on social media and we tell stories at the watercoolers and cafes. We are all proficient in telling stories orally.

Every time you are telling someone what happened when the fire came close to your property or how your son narrowly escaped a magpie attack, you are telling stories.

But when it comes to writing our stories, that we panic. We think we need special skills to write stories from our life.

The techniques of writing a good story are still the same as telling a good story and we learned it in the caves 50,000 years ago.

Let’s learn it from the young man in the cave who is going to tell a story.

1. Hook the audience

The first element of a good story is to hook the audience. If you are able to do that with your first sentence, you have them.

Let’s see what the young man did to hook his audience? He asked a question. Not just any question but a simple but clever question. His question was, “Do you know what happened to me today when I went hunting? ” In this question, he is promising two things – one I have a story to tell and it is going to be an interesting story because you can’t imagine what happened to me when I went hunting.

We, humans, are suckers for stories.

Of course, we want to hear your story, the cavemen must have felt, and it better be a good story now that you have our attention, young man.

So the first element is the hook the second element is the promise.

2. Make a promise

Very early in your story, you need to make a promise that your story is going to be worth their time. Even in cave days, the audience didn’t have time to listen to the worthless stories.

Imagine if the young man in the cave proceeded by telling them that he got lost and was tired, hungry and cold walking all the way back in the rain. Would anyone have kept listening?

Definitely not.

He is breaking the ‘implied’ promise he made in his first line. This is going to be an interesting story guys, better listen. And he uses a special oral technique to make that promise. He pauses.

A pause in oral storytelling evokes interest. It brings involvement. When another caveman asked ‘What?’ it showed he is interested.

In written stories, it is achieved in the same way by arousing the questions in the reader’s mind. Look at some of the opening lines I picked randomly from the books around me.

Recently my twenty-two-year-old daughter asked me what message I would give to my own twenty-two-years old self if I could travel back in time. – Anna Quindlen – Lots of Candles Plenty of Cake

The beach is not the place to work; to read, write or think. – Anne Morro Lindbergh – Gift From the Sea

In the country where I now live, there is no word for home. – Isabel Huggan in Belonging

Once you have made the promise you have to keep it. But you keep it in such a way that it keeps your audience interest. You do that by creating suspense.

3. Create Suspense

Suspense is the third element of a good story.

Let’s see how the young caveman achieved it.

I was standing behind a tree, ready with my bow and arrow, looking towards the river, at the point where the animals come to drink water when something towards me. You wouldn’t believe what it was?

Okay, you want to know what he saw. The caveman has used three techniques to create that suspense – by giving details (tree, river, bow, arrow), by adding in the wait factor ( standing behind a tree, ready) and by leaving it hanging (you wouldn’t believe what it was).

The suspense keeps readers wanting more. A story with suspense is never boring. Suspense takes the readers right inside the story and now they are ready for the journey.

4. Take them on a journey

That is right. Good storytelling is about taking your audience on a journey. They need to see what you are seeing. They need to smell what you are smelling. They need to be in the conflict with you and experience your

I couldn’t make out what it was. It was of the size and shape of a dear but its color was of the sun at mid-day and my eyes dazzled with its glow. I straightened my bow and pointed the arrow at him. He saw me. He knew I was hiding behind the tree. He looked straight at me but he wasn’t afraid. Instead, he signaled me with his head as if asking me to follow him. He then ran in the direction of the forest. I pushed my bow on my back and ran after him.

Now the rest of the cavemen are on the journey with the young guy. They are in the story anticipating what is going to unfold.

5. Give it a satisfactory ending

Nothing disappoints readers more than an unsatisfactory ending.

An unsatisfactory ending can make a good story go flat while a satisfactory ending can make a story memorable.

What is a satisfactory ending? One the deliver the promise you made at the beginning of the story. If you promised a suspenseful tale then a satisfactory ending would be that suspense is resolved. If you promised a romantic tale than then relationship issues are resolved and a happy state is reached. If you have promised an entertaining tale then humor is well-knitted in the story and the punch line delivers the surprise.

He disappeared in the forest. I couldn’t find him. But I found myself in a meadow full of lush grass where a lot of animals were grazing in the open. I took out my bow and aimed at a chamois. It lay dead at my feet. You are eating him right now. Fellow cavemen, I think I know how to get to that meadow. We don’t have to worry about food for years to come.

When we are writing stories from our life we are taking events from our lives and combining them with our thoughts, feelings, and reactions. Then we tell them in such a way that it evokes readers’ interest, entertains or educates them, and delivers the intended message.

It is as simple as the caveman’s story.

Find some story from your life and try telling it to a friend incorporating all these rules. Don’t get disturbed if it doesn’t come out well in the first go. Most of the storytellers practice their craft over time. Keep in mind that a comedian tells the same joke multiple times before he perfects the timing, delivery and punch line.

Why we write?

Neera

It is almost midday, and I am sitting in the bed, notebook in hand, staring out of the window. My heart is filled with gloom. I have an article to write but nothing comes out. I have become dependent on pouring out my heart at times like these but writing for my blog is another matter.

Sometimes we forget why we write.

We write for the same reasons we read. C.S. Lewis said,“We read to know that we are not alone.”

When in despair or in doubt, I often reach for books to find answers. Invariably I get then. The same happened today. I picked up a book by my bedside and randomly opened a page. Following words spring up. 

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it……Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaningless itself.” 

— Joan Didion, A Year of Magical Thinking

As I read these words my heart filled with gratitude. 

Thank you Joan Didion for writing these words. You have put into words what I was feeling. Your words not only provided me comfort but helped me understand what I was going through. A grief of my own.

Here is a list of reasons why we write. 

We write to find comfort.

Life is hard and written words provide relief. Some of us discover very early in our lives that books can provide solace at times when nothing else can. There comes the time when just reading can’t carry us through, and it is then we discover writing.

When Isabel Allende’s daughter died after being in a coma for several months, she couldn’t handle the grief. For months, she started in a vacuum not knowing how to come out of this hole. Until her mother gave her a pen, a pad, and an ultimatum.

My daughter, Paula. died on December 6, 1992. On January 7, 1993, my mother said, “Tomorrow is January eight. If you don’t write, you’re going to die.”

She gave me the 180 letters I’d written to her while Paula was in a coma, and then she went to Macy’s. When my mother came back six hours later, I was in a pool of tears, but I’d written the first pages of Paula.

— Isabel Allende in Why We Write?

We write because it is who we are.

Everyone sees the world differently. Writers see the world in words. Many writers claim they can’t survive if they don’t write.

David Baldacci said, “If writing were illegal, I’d be in prison. I can’t not write. It is a compulsion.”

For me too, writing has become a compulsion. I have to write each day. My day starts with writing and ends with writing. If I can’t write any day it feels like a wasted day.

What is it about writing that makes it — for some of us — as necessary as breathing?

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.

Time slips away. The body becomes irrelevant. We are as close to consciousness itself as we will ever be.

This begins in the darkness. Beneath the frozen ground, buried deep below anything we can see, something may be taking root.

Stay there, if you can. Don’t resist. Don’t force it, but don’t run away.

Endure.

Be patient. The rewards cannot be measured. Not now. But whatever happens, any writer will tell you: This is the best part.

— Dani Shapiro in Still Writing

We write because we want to make a difference.

How many times have you heard people exclaiming, this book changed my life. You yourself might have felt the same way. Not just the books but — articles, personal stories, observations, insights — all have the power to make a difference in other people’s lives.

Even though we may not intentionally set out to make a difference, our words have profound power. Just think the Greta Thunberg’s speech on climate change or Amanda Gorman’s speech on the inauguration day. Did they make a difference?

Sometimes it is just a tiny little difference.

When my parents were still alive I started collecting their stories and stories of their parents. Recently I compiled them, put them in a private blog, and gave the link to my children, nephews, and nieces. Migrated to Australia as kids they were losing connection with the land where their grandparents lived all their lives. Stories I compile gave them their roots.

I write memoirs because I have a passionate desire to be of even the tiniest bit of help.

I like to write about the process of healing, of developing, of growing up, of becoming who we were born to be instead of who we always agreed to be.

It’s sort of a missionary thing, to describe one person’s interior, and to say we’re probably raised not to think this or say it, but actually, all of us feel it and have gone through it, and we all struggle with it.

I feel like it’s a gift I have to offer to people, to say, “This is what it’s like for me, who you seem to like or trust.

We’re all like this. We’re all ruined. We’re all loved. We all feel like victims, we all feel better than.”

— Anne Lamott in Why We Write About Ourselves

We write to be heard.

There is a common perception that writers write to make money. To make a name for themselves. Nothing can be far from the truth. We write because we want to be heard.

We write the thing that we can’t say. We write to express feelings that are hard to say verbally. We write to tell our stories. And of those whose stories must be told.

I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.

— Audre Lorde, author poet.

We write so that we can live.

Writing is a way to cope with the atrocities of life. The more life got harder, the more the heartache and pain became unbearable, the more I write.

It was some of my greatest, deepest writing. I reflected on life, relationships, and letting go. I honestly don’t think I would have survived this last week if I had not been writing. I wrote for myself.

We write to make sense of this world.

Sometimes this world we live in doesn’t make sense at all. When ugly things happen, writing becomes a tool to make sense of it. 

To understand the world, we first need to understand ourselves. We need to bare our souls to tell the story we want to tell. 

Writing about trauma is more than simply documenting experience — it’s about illuminating life on earth. It’s about transforming tragedy into art, and hoping that somehow that piece of art may help someone else who’s gone through something unbearable and who doesn’t yet see that there truly is a light at the end of the dark tunnel.

— Tracy Strauss

We write to find beauty.

Writing helps us go deep. And like gold, you got to move several tons of earth to find the nuggets. 

Writers are philosophers in making, always trying to figure out the meaning in everyday happenings. Our role is to hold the magnifying glass and enlarge whatever we are focusing on. 

Our job is to find hope where there is none, to find meaning where it doesn’t make sense, to find beauty where ugliness surrounds us.

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened, and its deepest mystery probed? … Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaning, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?

— Anne Dillard in The Writing Life

We write to give a gift.

When we write our stories with honesty and generosity about our lives and meticulous care for our craft, we are giving the world a gift. We’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best as we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story… And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or conflict. And that is why we write.

— Neil Gaiman

We write so that we can listen.

Writing is a way to listen better. Every time, I transcribe a podcast or a video I discover things I had missed while listening to it. 

I have a weird habit. I write down things people say to me. Those little snippets carry a different meaning on paper than they did verbally. The act of writing those words makes connections and brings out related stories. Even the hidden meanings.

I write because it is while I’m writing that I feel most connected to why we’re here. I write because silence is a heavyweight to carry. I write to remember. I write to heal. I write to let the air in. I write as a practice of listening.

— Andrea Gibson

We write to create order out of chaos.

When I wasn’t writing, I was reading. And when I wasn’t writing or reading, I was staring out the window, lost in thought. Life was elsewhere — I was sure of it — and writing was what took me there. In my notebooks, I escaped an unhappy and lonely childhood. I tried to make sense of myself. I had no intention of becoming a writer. I didn’t know that becoming a writer was possible. Still, writing was what saved me. It presented me with a window into the infinite. It allowed me to create order out of chaos.

— Dani Shapiro in Still Writing

Photo by Tessa Wilson on Unsplash

Should writers blog?

Neera

First of all, let’s establish what is a blog.

‘Blog’ is the short version of the term ‘weblog’ which refers to online journals. Starting just twenty years ago blogs are like mini websites where people publish their opinions, stories, and other writings as well as photos and videos. As the web has grown and changed, blogs have gained more recognition and merit.

Almost ten years ago, when blogging was just taking off, the general view was that authors, both fiction and non-fiction, should have blogs in order to gather an audience and build relationships with readers. Now, this view is challenged.

Let’s not kid anyone. Blogging takes a lot of time and time is a rare commodity for writers.

You need to come up with ideas for content and publish regularly preferably weekly. You also need to learn the technology, search engine optimization and other jargon which is a challenge in itself.

Jane Friedman, a full-time writer working in the publishing industry, warns about the investment it takes to blog:

“As with any form of writing, it takes a considerable investment of energy and time to do it right and get something from it.”

A writer, P. S. Hoffman published an article in Writer’s Digest 5 Ways an Author Blog Could Kill Your Writing. He warns that blogging will not only steal your valuable writing time but will build ‘wrong’ writing skills, will not help you much with selling your books but instead will stand in the way of finishing your writing project – your book.

But in response to the same article, Stephanie Chandler, another writer, wrote:

I built my author platform with a blog, so I have to disagree with this as blanket advice. One of the biggest benefits a blog brings is website traffic. Statistically, the more often you blog, the more traffic your site will receive. And if your site is working to cultivate an audience instead of just trying to sell books (there’s a big difference between building a tribe and just trying to sell one book at a time), then traffic matters. Traffic also matters to publishers.

For nonfiction writers, a blog helps establish authority in your field and attract readers based on keyword concentration. My blog has brought me countless media interviews, traditional publishing deals, and corporate sponsors. Blogging established me as an influencer.

I am more in line with Stephanie Chandler’s views. Here are my 5 reasons why blogging will benefit any writer.

1. Blogging is the best way to become a fluent writer, find your voice, and bring clarity to your thoughts.

I have grown more as a writer in the past eighteen months than I did in the past eighteen years of writing journals, short stories, memoirs and even the first draft of a novel.

I have put aside all other writing projects to give full attention to blogging.

Blogging might be different from other published writing, but it is not in any way “lesser-writing” or “less-labor-intensive.”

Your posts can be less formal, less researched, and more conversational, but writing them still requires the same kind of practice and skill as crafting a novel. The more you do it, the better you get. And if done right and seriously, all the writing you do for your blog can have another life as a book or in another format.

2. Blogs are gardens for ideas.

Marc Weidenbaum in his post Bring Out Your Blogs uses a garden as a metaphor for blogs. Like a gardener, you plant ideas like seeds in a blog and then watch which one grows to become healthy plants and which one never germinates.

Austin Kleon considers blogs as a thinking place for artists, somewhere to try out their half-baked thoughts and work on them till they are fully formed. In his book Keep Going he writes:

My blog has been my sketchbook, my studio, my gallery, my storefront and my salon. Absolutely everything good that has happened in my career can be traced back to my blog. My books, my art shows, my speaking gigs, some of my best friendships

[…]

Fill your website with your work, your ideas and the stuff you care about. Stick with it, maintain it and let it change with you over time.

3. Blogging helps you connect with like-minded people.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, you soon will, that writing is a lonely profession. Blogging helps you build your own community of people who like to read what you like to read. They become your first readers because they are already reading and liking, what you are writing.

If you are new to writing and want to be in there for a long haul, you need to blog. That is not only to get better at writing but also to connect with like-minded people.

For the first few years, it might feel like you are blogging for yourself and no one else is reading or care whether or not you blog. These are good years. Be thankful for that because during this time you will make all the mistakes and figure out what works and what doesn’t.

In time, your audience will discover you. You got to give yourself time, though, and stick it out. Many people give up after a year or two of random blogging. Think of it as a five-year plan at least. Don’t worry, blogging will become really easy by then. The first 1000 blog posts are difficult, after that they become really easy, says Seth Godin, who has posted more than 7000 posts and never missed a day.

4. A Blog is your own publishing house.

As a beginning writer, it is very difficult to get your work published. The old publishing model is dying, publishing houses are losing money, so they are very careful with whose work they should publish next. They normally like to stick with known authors.

That doesn’t mean they won’t publish your book. They will if you already have a readership and a mailing list. A blog helps you get both.

Besides, what good is your book if no one is reading it and it is just sitting in the bottom drawer of your study table or on your hard disc? Why not self-publish it on your blog as an e-book and start the next one?

If you are not publishing anything, that means no one is reading any of your writing. Blogging allows you to start small and build a readership. Even if a few people read your articles, they are being read.

Besides, weekly publishing of posts gives you the practice of self-editing and meeting deadlines.

5. You never know where blogging will take you

In 2002, a 30-year-old secretary from Queens, New York, broke the monotony of her life by preparing — in the course of one year — the 525 recipes in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by the legendary cook Julia Childs. She also blogged about it.

Julie Powell became so popular that she turned it into a book that later became a movie, Julie and Julia starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams and end up winning several awards.

Absolutely everything good that has happened in my career can be traced back to my blog. My books, my art shows, my speaking gigs, some of my best friendships – they all exists because I have my own little piece of turf on the Internet.

Austin Kleon in Keep Going

All said and done, you do not have to blog, and if you have little interest in the form.

If you don’t find any joy in the activity, and it is constantly killing your creativity and stressing you out, then please don’t pursue it. Choose other social media options.

Social media is widely accepted as a powerful marketing tool for writers. You can choose anything you are comfortable with – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Goodreads. Many authors are using one or more of these platforms successfully. Elizabeth Gilbert doesn’t blog, but she is on Facebook, Twitter and, Instagram every day sometimes two to three times a day.

Charlie Mackesy shared every sketch on Instagram and build a vast audience even before his book The boy, the mole, the fox, and the Horse was published late last year. The book was an instant hit and is nominated for various awards.

In a nutshell, a blog could be a powerful platform for new writers if they enjoy blogging and will invest the time and effort it requires. If it is something you care little about, you shouldn’t force yourself, just chose one of the other social media platforms to suit your style of communication.

Photo by Arnel Hasanovic on Unsplash

The New Year Resolution – Let’s Get It Over With

Neera

The new year. New energy. A time to make a new promise to yourself.

A promise most of the people will break before the first week of the first month is over.

This year do something different.

Don’t set a new year resolution.

You read it right. It is me saying that. The one who is big on daily tasks, weekly projects and monthly goals.

All those things are fine. I work well with them. But a year is too long. A lot can happen in 12 months. Life has a way of surprising us. Remember the age-old saying – “Man proposes, God disposes” 

The trouble with setting New Year resolutions is that each year we set higher and higher standards for ourselves. We already have so much on our plate. We don’t need to put ourselves with more anxiety, more pressure.

It is time to accept that you are not your accomplishments. Your existence is not just for meeting goals. Your existence is to be here. In the moment. To be present in whatever state you are in.

You are not to under-promise and over-deliver. You don’t need to continually improve. You are not a Fortune 500 company which has to show more profit each year. You are a living being. And like any other living being whether it is a bird, or a fish, or a dog, or a cat you have a right to be here.

Have you ever seen a cat setting a New Year Resolution? For her, today is like any other day. As long as she gets food and water and comfortable surroundings it is a perfect day for her.

Why can’t it be the same for us? Why do we have to make our own lives miserable by setting higher and higher goals?

If anything, we need to cut out some of the trivial things from our lives.

“You do not need to waste your time doing those things that are unnecessary and trifling. You do not have to be rich. You do not need to seek fame or power. What you need is freedom, solidity, peace and joy. You need the time and energy to be able to share these things with others.”

― Thích Nhất Hạnh, No Death, No Fear

As far as your writing goals are concerned, just understand one thing. Rather than setting a goal that I will finish the book this year or I will write a million words by the end of the year, just think of writing as a daily practice.

That is what writing actually is. A daily practice. Just like cooking or having a shower. It is simply something you do every day, whether for fifteen minutes or one hour. If you make it a daily routine, just like cooking or having a shower, it will not be such a scary thing.

You don’t need to worry about the quality or quantity of your writing. Just write. If you write daily, both quality and quantity will improve.

And let go of the thought, this year, that you are not a writer until you are published. If you write, you are a writer.

“You are what you want to become. Why search anymore? You are a wonderful manifestation. The whole universe has come together to make your existence possible. There is nothing that is not you. The kingdom of God, the Pure Land, nirvana, happiness, and liberation are all you.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh

Let this decade be the decade to free yourself from any expectations, mostly of your own.

Enjoy the new year to its fullest!