Month: May 2021

The Art of Noticing

Neera

I was in the public library, where, near the entrance, where they put new books on display, was Helen Garner’s face on a book cover, looking at me intently. She seemed to be wondering whether I was worthy enough to read her superbly written prose.

I picked up the book. It was titled “Yellow Notebook Diaries Volume I 1978–1987.” I was in my early twenties during those years, still trying to figure out who I was and Helen had already written her first novel, “Monkey Grip.”

I opened it and read the first line…

“Maybe it’d be a good idea to start another diary, just to cream it off. I bought this yellow book today.” 

— Helen Garner

It would be a good idea for me too, to start another diary too, where I can practice writing like Helen Garner. Where I can learn to notice little things, insights and idiosyncrasies of being human. It will be good if I could write a page a day. Maybe that’s too much of an ask. I know I will not be able to keep up the promise. I will take that pressure off right now. I will write whenever I can.

A writer’s job is to record what is happening around her. I need to pay attention to my things around me. 

Pay Attention to What You Care About.

Rob Walker, writer of the wonderful book “The Art of Noticing,” wrote in his newsletter:.

Pay attention to what you care about; care about what you pay attention to.

There is a connection between noticing and attention and caring and observations. 

We often end up “noticing” or paying attention to things we really care about.

Austin Kleon wrote about Amy Meissner is a textile artist, who used to run the mending and clothes repair workshops. All her workshops had the same caption: “Mend a thing.”

Because she believes, once you’ve mended something, if you didn’t have sentimental value attached to it before, then you certainly do once you’ve taken the time to care for it.

That might me the reason why I am so attached to the tapestries I have made. I can still remember what I was thinking when I embroidered a particular part of the tapestry. As if my thoughts got woven with the threads and became a part of the tapestry.

Rob Walker, talked about a student who made a planter for the cactus he cared for. He’d done that, on the theory that “by nurturing or caring for something, you pay more attention to it.” 

Rob drew a diagram of care/notice cycle.

Image by the author

He says it is helpful to ask yourself:

  • Is this thing I am paying attention to, do I actually care about?
  • This (other) things I do really care about, am I giving it the attention I should?
  • Am I noticing what I want to notice?

A Lone Shoe

One of Rob’s readers wrote:

For decades I’ve walked and hiked trails and sidewalks and driven country roads. Sometime… more often than seems plausible I come across a shoe. One shoe. Never a pair of shoe. I make up a story about how each one must have ended up this way or about the person who has the other shoe. I don’t remember all the shoes or all the stories. But I always remember to take time to ponder. — Phyllis

Practicing the Art of Noticing.

I am so surprised how all these stories are blending with Helen Garner’s way writing which is based on noticing.

Helen writes in her diary:

A man in metro, a 1950s relic but real, not an affectation — untidy, perfectly period clothes — lumber jacket, tight trousers, big worn, non-descript shoes. He was playing and exuisite basic rock-and-roll guitar and singing ‘Corinna’ through a little amp that looked like a white Daisy Duck radio.”

While driving to the veggie market I decide to notice something. Just to test my noticing skills. But what? I settled upon noticing shades of green. 

A few days’ rain has turned every bit of vegetation into different shades of green. I noticed a tree with fresh big leaves. It’s a light green. The leafy kind of light green with a tinge of yellow at the edges. The grass on the ground has different shades too — deeper green, pastel green and eucalyptus green. The green on the shrubs has more red tone even orange at places. That is strange, I had never noticed before that each green has a tinge of some other colour at the edges. Sometimes yellow, sometimes red, sometimes purple.

I came home, rather pleased with myself. While putting the vegies away I heard a fly trapped somewhere in the kitchen. I couldn’t see it. I tuned myself to the sound, deciding to continue practicing the Art of Noticing.

Her buzzing is getting more desperate with time. Seems like it is trapped in the overhead exhaust fan above the stove. I open one screen of the canopy to let it out. I can’t even see it. That’s all I can do. It will have to find its own way out. No one can help you when you are trapped, more than opening the door. You have to find your own way out. I go to the bedroom to chane, by the time I come back the buzzing had stopped. I put the screen back. I might have saved a life today.

Conclusion

It wasn’t hard to notice things once you consciously make an effort.

Rob Walker’s book, The Art of Noticing — 131 Way To Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration and Discover Joy in the Every Day, could give you a good start.

Photo by Bookblock on Unsplash

How To Write Stories From Everyday Life (Part 3 – How to shape stories)

Neera

I started writing this series because I want to get back into writing fiction this year. In addition, it is a way for me to remember what I learned while writing a short story a day during NaNoWriMo in 2014.

In the previous two articles of this series, I talked about getting ideas for everyday stories and writing them. 

Today we are going to explore how I shape my stories. I use several fiction writing tools, which I am going to touch on briefly in this article. There are books written on each one of them so that I won’t go too deep. Later on, if needed, I will write separate articles on them.

The process I used to shape my stories has five steps:

  1. Narrator/ Point Of View 
  2. Description
  3. Dialogue
  4. Ending
  5. Editing

Narrator/ Point Of View (POV)

After you have written the first draft of the story and rested it (for at least a day), it is time to examine it critically. The first question to ask is who should be the narrator of the story.

Usually, it the person who has the most to lose. But there could be exceptions to this rule. Sometimes it makes sense to tell the story from an observer’s perspective. Other times a completely unexpected narrator gives a new angle to the story. In one of my stories, The Blessed, I used an old decaying temple as the narrator.

A narrator in fiction is the one who tells the story. The narrator determines the point of view of the story. If the narrator is not a character in the story, the story is a third-person narrative. If a character is telling the story, it is a first-person narrative. 

The first-person narrative is more intimate, intense, and engaging, but it could be limiting. You can tell only the central character’s perspective. The third-person narrative can be distant but allows you to tell a more balanced story.

There is another point of view used in storytelling, called deep-third or close-third. Like the first-person narrative, the deep-third focuses on a single character and takes the readers directly into the character’s mind. Writing as if in the first person, deep-third is a hard technique to master, but it provides the benefits of both the first-person narrative and omnipresent viewpoint of the third-person narrative.

How to choose which one to use. It depends upon the kind of story you are telling and the emotion you want to evoke. My rule is — more intense an emotion I want to evoke, the more likely I will use the first-person narrative. My stories A Christmas Wish and The Goddess are first-person narratives. 

But here are some markers to help you decide:

  • If the story about an individual with a distinct voice and quirky habits or language, use the first person.
  • If the story is about the internal conflict where the character indulges in lengthy ruminations, choose the first person again.
  • If you want your readers to identify with the POV character, choose the first person or close third.
  • If your character is not making the right choices or is a negative character, but you want readers to be sympathetic towards him/her, use the first-person or close-third.
  • If you want to describe your character from the outside and give her thoughts, choose the close third person.
  • If you want to include your opinion along with the characters’, choose the third person.
  • If you want identification between reader and character, perhaps because you’re going to show the irony of the situation or mock your character, choose the third-person narrative.

Once I have decided on the narrator and point of view character, I view my first draft to see if I need to rewrite it. Chances are, my subconscious had made the right decision when I wrote the first draft. If not, I would write it again. 

But before embarking on doing the second draft, I will consider the description, dialogue, and how to end my story. 

Let’s have a look at those too.

Description

In a short story, there is not much space for descriptions. Besides, long descriptions are out of fashion. Whereas older novels and stories are full of lengthy and flowery descriptions, modern writers are not bothering with them. 

Why?

Because readers skip them.

So what is the point of spending a lot of time on something that readers will skip?

Today readers don’t have much time. They want fast-paced stories where the action is happening either through dialogue or physical movement. And they are interested in interesting conflict and how it resolves. 

But the description is still fundamental. As a writer, you need to know everything about the setting, people, and the situation before telling the story. 

What does the place look like where the story is taking place? What are the physical characteristics of the characters? What are they wearing? Why are they doing what are they doing? That kind of detail, described in the fewest possible words, differentiated a good story from an amazing story.

Not every detail will make it to the page. The details that will make into the story will be the ones that are vivid and significant. But every detail will give you insight into your character. 

For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else. 

— Stephen King, On Writing.

Dialogue

Dialogues are the magic weapon in a writer’s arsenal. 

Dialogues make the story come alive. 

Dialogues also reveal the characters, their thoughts, and their intentions. 

Dialogues are the easiest way to introduce conflict in the story.

A lot can be said with a little exchange of dialogue than multiple pages of description.

I make sure I include dialogue in my stories for one or more than one of the above-listed reasons. 

But dialogue is a dish that is served well-done. Poor dialogue can make readers quit reading your story in disgust, but great dialogue can heavily invest your readers into your characters’ cause. 

Don’t include dialogue for the sake of including dialogue. Instead, make them work for the story.

Ending

Some stories reach their conclusion without any effort. Others don’t; it doesn’t matter how hard you try. I have so many half-written stories sitting in folders.

My theory about such stories is — it is better to leave them by giving them an interesting twist than giving them a forced ending.

What readers are looking for in a story is a feeling—an emotional response. We can achieve that by leaving some questions unanswered. Or even by asking the questions within the story.

Another thing that makes a story impactful is what readers take away from it. 

Brainstorm some themes that are important to you and work your short story around them. This will not only make your readers care more about your story (which means it’ll be written better), but it’ll also make it more satisfying for you to write.

Editing

Editing is where the magic happens. But, unfortunately, it is also the hardest skill to master. Because by this time, you are so heavily invested in your story that it is hard to strike off even a single word.

But editing is one skill we all need to master. Without self-editing, we can’t become good writers. 

My first pass is to get rid of any filter words. Filter words are extra words that put distance between readers and a character’s experience. Words (such as seemed, thought, heard, touched, realized, understood, felt, sounded like, experienced, etc.) are usually explanatory words that remove the reader from the action by describing a character’s thought process or action in an explanatory way.

My second edit is for the tense consistency (and I suck at it). I have recently learned to watch for continuous tense (verbs ending with “ing”) and replace them with past tense. 

My third edit is to replace weak verbs with strong verbs. (A list of strong verbs found right here).

And my last edit is to cut any superfluous words to bring the story to the length needed. I usually do that by reading the story aloud. 

That’s it, my friends. My process to write short stories from everyday life. Now I need to follow my own advice and write good stories about the things happening around me.

Photo by Shail Sharma on Unsplash

How To Write Stories From Everyday Life (Part 2 – Writing the first draft)

Neera 1 Comment

In yesterday’s article, I suggested three ways to pick stories from everyday life. Today I am going to talk about how to develop them into a stories.

You have to keep in mind that this form of storytelling is different from plot-driven storytelling, where the plot thinks for you.

There is basically only one plot in all plot-driven stories, whether you consider Christopher Booker’s Seven Basic Plots or Georges Polti’s Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations.

And that plot is — there is a central character who wants something intensely and goes after it. He struggles and faces obstacles after obstacles, leading him to climax, after which he either wins or loses.

In this format of storytelling, the plot leads you to the considerations such as theme, setting, point of view, structure, narrative arc, etc. Plot-driven storytelling works well for anything above 5000 words.

Usually, stories from everyday life events are written as micro-stories (300 words or less), or flash fiction (up to 1000 words), or short stories (1000–2000 words). Anything longer than that, you need to follow plot guidelines.

Now that we have got plot-driven stories out of the way, let’s concentrate on non-plot-driven stories.

There are five elements to consider while writing stories from everyday life events. They are:

  1. Emotion
  2. Characters
  3. Conflict
  4. Scene
  5. Insight

Emotion

Emotion is the most important consideration to write everyday stories.

When reading a story, readers want something to touch their hearts. They want to feel something — love, compassion, hatred, pity, anger, wonder, surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, hope, trust, joy, shame, envy, anticipation etc.

In the short form, you can’t have too many emotions. So you need to concentrate on one.

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need to find your short story. — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Characters

Stories are always about someone. Micro-stories or even a story of few paragraphs has a character. Even the stories about animals, vegetables, or machines have central characters.

One of the main characteristics of a story is that the lead character goes through some form of transformation. However small, but the transformation is there. It doesn’t even have to be a positive transformation.

Long-form fiction has several characters in it. You do not have that luxury in short stories. The more characters you have, the more words you will need to describe them and their relationship and interactions with each other.

Keep the number to as few as possible. Two are ideal. Three or four are permissible. Anything more and you will end up writing a novella or a novel.

Conflict

conflict is the breeding ground from where the stories emerge.

It could be an internal conflict (conflict happening in the protagonist’s mind, also depicted as man vs. mind) or external conflict (man vs. man, man vs. nature).

Since the short stories don’t have much space, they mostly start when the central character is at the end of the road—a desperate man taking desperate measures.

Once you have chosen the key emotion, elaborate on the conflict around it. Make it simple and focused. Narrow down your ideas as much as possible.

Think of all the things that can go wrong for your character. Everything you don’t want to happen to you or your friends should happen to your character. The only conflict is interesting. 

Scene

When you write a story, you have two choices. You can show, or you can tell. If you are showing you are writing a scene. If you are telling you are writing a summary.

A scene is vivid and intimate; a summary is distant and efficient. The scene is where the writer engages the imagination and the emotions of the readers. Everything important in your story should happen in a scene.

You now have a key emotion, one or two-character, and a conflict. Next, think of a scene where this conflict unfolds.

You start writing from the middle. When the action is over, and the aftermath is unfolding. Suppose it is a story about a long-standing marriage in trouble. You don’t need to write about the years of prosperity and bliss.

Insight

When does an anecdote become a story? When there is an insight.

Stories from everyday life are reflective. The writer examines an event or a memory to draw home a message. Sometimes the message is explicit, other times it is implied. But it is always there. Without a message, a story has no reason. 

When reading a story readers are on the lookout for insight. It invites them to introspect and examine their own thoughts and beliefs. It is through insights that readers build a connection with the writer. 

When the readers feel the same emotion you as a writer want to convey and get the same insight you want them to get, you have succeeded in writing an emotive story.

Here is a story by Nardi Reeder Campionthat appeared in Readers Digest a little while ago to illustrate the significance of insights in everyday stories.

Nardi describes a time in her life when she was down in dumps when she discovers a diary that had been kept more than forty years by a maiden aunt who had gone through some bad times herself.

Aunt Grace had been poor, frail and forced to live with relatives. 

“I know I must be cheerful,” she wrote, “living in this large family upon whom I am dependent. Yet gloom haunts me. Clearly, my situation is not going to change; therefore I shall have to change.”

To help her hold her fragile world together, Aunt Grace resolved to do six things every day:

1. Something for someone else

2. Something for herself

3. Something she didn’t want to do that needed doing

4. A physical exercise

5. A mental exercise

6. An original prayer that always included counting her blessings

The rest of the story described how these six steps help change Aunt Grace’s life.“Can life be lived by a formula?” Nardi asked herself. 

“All I know is that since I started to live by those six precepts, I’ve become more involved with others and less ‘buried’ in myself.” Instead of wallowing in self-pity, I have adopted Aunt Grace’s motto, “Bloom where you are planted.”

“It is extraordinary how extraordinary the ordinary person is.” — George Will

And even more extraordinary is the number of stories they’re carrying around — waiting to be written.

Now write the first draft.

Write the story as it comes to you.

Remember, it is only the first draft. The aim of the first draft is to find the story.

Don’t worry about polishing it or introducing various storytelling elements to it. All that can be done later. Don’t worry if you can’t take it to a conclusion either. Take it as far as you can.

When you get really stuck, use the TPIOM technique.

TPiOM is the refined version of James Altucher’s Idea Machine technique for fiction writers.

TPiOM stands for Ten Ideas in One Minute. If you can’t figure out what bad thing will happen to your protagonist, list ten possibilities in one minute. You must write ten doesn’t matter how unlikely they are to happen, and you must write them quickly before your left brain gets a chance to interfere. 

Then chose the most unusual one and proceeded with it. 

Don’t worry about the word count.

Write as many words as you need to tell the story. 

Don’t worry about bringing it to a certain length. 

If your story is about a conversation you had over coffee, capture as many details as you remember — describe the cafeteria, the smell of coffee, what your friends were wearing, the waiter in the background, the crockery. Try capturing dialogue as best as you can.

Once you have done it, put it aside and pat yourself on the back.

Today’s work is done.

Your draft is rough, but we can smooth it out in revisions.

Because stories aren’t written, they are re-written.

——-

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

How To Write Stories From Everyday Life (Part 1 — Idea Generation)

Neera

Everyone likes stories. Stories are how we communicate. But, the best stories are the stories that are close to home – stories from everyday life.

Storytelling is important not only for fiction writers but the non-fiction writers too. What makes non-fiction interesting to read is the stories.

One way to practice storytelling is to write short stories based on what happens around us. There is a story in practically everything. You need to develop a knack to pick them up.

Getting good at writing short stories can set you up for success in other writing ventures as well.

Even if your end goal is to write a novel, you should learn how to craft solid, captivating short stories.

If you think writing short stories is easier because they are short, you are mistaken.

Writing short stories is hard.

The truth is to tell a story in a limited number of words takes more skill than writing a full-length novel or a nonfiction book.

And writing short stories from your life is even harder. Mainly because you are too close to the incident. But stories from your life are more impactful and insightful. They relate better.

There is an art to writing amazing stories. I am going to write a three article series on how to write stories from everyday life.

Today’s article is the first one of the series where I will suggest how to pick ideas for stories.

There are three ways you can pick stories from around you.

Be on the lookout for something unusual.

Out-of-ordinary things are happening around us all the time.

A next-door neighbor whom you know like the kind and docile man turns out to be a crossdresser.

A couple you know as an ideal couple divorced after twenty years of marriage.

The well-dressed old lady at the end of the street is a shoplifter.

We see and hear about these things all the time, but instead of making a note of them, we dismiss them.

If you take a moment and start thinking about them, each one has the potential to become a story.

Take the crossdresser man, for instance. How did you find out he was a crossdresser? Was he embarrassed? How often would he have felt that embarrassment? What does his family think about him? How made him a crossdresser? What would his world be like? What he really wants in his ideal world? Of course, you don’t know the answer to all these questions, but that is exactly the place to develop your fiction writing skills.

A non-fiction writer will try to find the fact and write the story from the factual aspect; a fiction writer will fill the details from her imagination.

Another source to pick unusual events or things in the newspapers, TV, magazines, or even other fictional stories. Start collecting them as you come across them. For example, a young man jumping from the Sydney Harbour Bridge is a story. Two drunken young women arrested for revealing themselves also is a story.

Keep the cuttings in a folder, and let them rest there for a while. Then, when you take them out months later, you will be able to see them with fresh eyes and weave a story around them.

Add something unusual to every day happening.

Not all daily happenings are out of the ordinary. But they still can be turned into a story with a bit of imagination.

Three friends driving out of town to a winery for lunch is hardly an out-of-the-ordinary event. But with some imagination, you can add something unexpected to it.

They can meet an accident where just the driver survives, and the other two are killed. The driver holds herself responsible for their deaths because he knew it was his fault.

They can meet an extraordinary woman in the winery whom all three want to be friends with, so they toss a coin.

The winery could be closed due to renovation, but they decide to poke around and find a stock of bottles. Seeing no one around, they decide to steal a few boxes.

Imaginary stories have been used in non-fiction writing too. They can become hypothetical scenarios.

Write it as it is but give it an insight.

Some events are complete stories in themselves because they hold meaning in them. You don’t need to do much with them other than highlight that insight.

Have a look at the story below:

One afternoon, Martha Sweeny, was in a coin laundry outside her hometown of stonewall Texas, when half a dozen young motorcyclists suddenly roared up to the gas station next door.

They were all a boisterous, rough-looking lot, and one of them — younger than the other, no more than seventeen — was the loudest and roughest-acting of the bunch.

With several of his friends, the boy entered the laundry, and then something happened when he looked around this small, rural town laundry and, especially when he notices this older woman observing him.

In one of those revealing moments we’ve all lived through, Martha made eye contact with the boy and saw him hesitate.

Later after his friends had gassed up their cycles, he told them his starter was on the blink to go on without him. He said he’d catch up.

After the others went roaring off, the boy brought some dirty clothes into the laundry. “His shoulders sagged as if he were terribly weary.

Dust and grease and sweat-stained his shirt and jeans. A beginning beard faintly shadowed his chin and lean cheeks. He turned, briefly, our eyes met again. Emotions flickered across his face. Doubt, longing, pain?”

Moments later he ran his clothes through the washer and dryer, then disappeared into the men’s room.

When he emerged ten minutes later, he was wearing clean pants and shirt and he had shaved his scraggly beard scrubbed his hands and face and even combed his hair.

He now grinned in Martha’s direction and jumping on his motorcycle, zoomed away.

Not following the others, but going back the way he’d come. Back towards home.

I read this story in a Reader’s Digest years ago (unfortunately, I didn’t note the writer’s details). Every time I read, it gives me a lump in the throat. And that is the point of the stories — to evoke emotions. 

The insight here is highlighted by a single line ‘He now grinned in Martha’s direction and jumping on his motorcycle, zoomed away.’ It gives you hope that a single moment can change the course of your life.

I have published some stories on Medium The Flight, Aunt Olivia, A Christmas Wish, The Blessed, and The Goddess based on observation of everyday happenings in life.

I wrote them six to seven years ago and haven’t done much with them since. I am trying to get back into fiction writing, and this is my way of revising what I learned about story writing years ago.

In the next article, I will explore how to develop stories once you have collected some ideas.

Photo by Silas Tolles on Unsplash

How To Look Death In the Eye And Live Intensely

Neera 1 Comment

Today I met two of my ex-students for coffee. Last year they did a Life Story Blogging course I was leading. They both wrote stories from their lives and put them up on blogs for their children and grandchildren to read.

When you put together three women and give them a cup of coffee each, there is no shortage of topics to talk about.

We talked non-stop, without catching our breaths, and still only scratched the surface of our lives. Maybe that is was why women, are so keen to write our life stories because we are custodians of stories.

Each of us has gone through so much, and much of it is ‘untalkable’ when we are going through it, it is no wonder that we take refuge in writing.

Although I got their permission to write this article based on our conversation; I won’t reveal their names and call them S and M instead.

When S started writing her life story, she churned out 1000 plus words every day for six months. She still has two decades of her life to write about. Having worked as a nurse, teacher, and at UNO in her younger days, she has a lot to write about. Besides, she has cycled through the world and later on walked more than twenty countries.

No doubt she has a lot to write about.

M was different. At first, she was hesitant and had less faith in her ability to tell her story. She needed a little help to start her blog. But once she started writing, we were all enthralled with her ability to tell a story. She is a natural storyteller.

With the curiosity of a child, she would listen to each one of us patiently, asking innocent questions. She then would come up with a scintillating story with a remarkable insight that would leave us gasping.

“You know my status has changed since we met last,” beamed M, radiating with an inner glow, “I am a great-grandmother now. My twenty-three years old grandson and his partner had a baby boy. They brought him over to show me. When I saw him, I gasped. He is the spitting image of his grandfather, my son Andrew.”

“Really!” Both S and I exclaimed together. We knew M had lost her son in a road accident at a very young age.

We saw baby photos and of beaming merely seventy-years old grandmother when I asked matter-of-factly, “How are you doing, M? Have you recovered from the operation earlier in the year. You look good, I must say.”

“Well, the news is not so good.”

I stopped in my tracks.

“I was telling S before you arrived. They have removed one lung, as you know. Now Cancer has gone to my other lung as well. And they have found metastasis in my left breast. They can’t tell me how long I have.”

I looked at her as if I am looking at a ghost. I feel so stupid as I am writing this. We are all going to die one day, but when we hear about writing on the wall for someone, we can’t believe it.

“They want to put me on chemo and radiation etc., but having gone through all that with my ovarian cancer, I don’t want to go through it.”

“Fair enough,” we said. In our sixties and seventies, every year we live is a year to enjoy life, not to put it through hell with the hope to extend it.

“But there is so much I want to do,” cried M. “I want to learn how to draw cartoons. I want to study anthropology. I want to finish writing my life stories. But I don’t have any time left.”

On the one hand, we agreed with her. But, on the other hand, when you know you have only a limited time left, how can you fit so much in that little time. But as soon as you give up, you are inviting death to come even sooner.

“Why don’t you make a list of all the things you want to do. Then pick one and do that.” I suggested.

“That is what my therapist suggested too. She said to pick one or two things. And I like how you are doing a thing for 100 days and then moving on to the next one. But I don’t know if I have 100 days.” M said.

She was so accepting of the inevitable that I wanted to get up and hug her.

“Why don’t you do it for 30 days instead. In fact, each month, pick up one thing from your list and do it for 30 days. Give it your full attention, enjoy it while you are doing it, and then move on to the next thing on the list.”

“That is such a great idea.” M beamed. “I don’t know how much I will be able to cover in a month.”

“A lot,” I said, “if you do a little bit every single day. If you want to study anthropology, study a few pages each day. Read some blogs. Make some notes. Write down your insights in a notebook. You might leave behind a diary full of your understanding and learnings from the study you did in a subject you always wanted to study. That will be more than people who had a degree in the subject would have done.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” said M. That is something I love so much about M. She always accepts things wholeheartedly.

“It takes me a week to write a story. I write it, then I edit it and edit it. I will only be able to write four stories in a month.”

“Maybe you should record your stories rather than type. There are so many free apps available that can transcribe. There is one that types as you speak.” I took out my mobile phone and demonstrated Otter.ai.

An hour later, I drove home, and while driving through the wide, sunny Canberra streets, I thought about the limited time I too have left on the beautiful planet earth and my ever-growing list of things I want to do.

I, too, will make a list of things I want to do and do them one at a time for 100 days each, giving them my full attention while I am doing them. And then I will let them go. There is no point in clinging to them because it will mean you won’t be able to give your full attention to the next one.

And I am going to make sure that list never ends. It is the desires that keep us alive. As long as we have a purpose and desires, life has meaning.

“You know what, my doctor is saying that my cancer is not spreading as fast as they were expecting. Maybe I will be able to cross quite a few things off my list.” I remembered M’s remark as we parted, promising each other to meet again soon.

Photo by Gradikaa Aggi on Unsplash

Filing is a Critical Skill That Most Writers Ignore

Neera 1 Comment

A little while ago, I wrote an article, 3 Habits Of A Freshman Writer, where I touched on the importance of having a proper system to file your work and research.

No writing book or article I ever read mentioned organizing your writing and notes, yet it is one of the most important habits for new writers.

I have spent months trying to find quotes/ notes/ stories that I scribbled somewhere and didn’t file them properly. Not only it a wasted time, but my writing is poorer for the lack of all that reference material that could have made it more impactful.

This week, Austin Kleon touched on Indexing, filing systems, and the art of finding what you have in his blog. He, too, has no system to file his work.

“I have no index for the notebooks (unless you count my logbook), and no way, really, of knowing what’s in them, a condition worsened by my terrible memory, and the fact that one of the reasons I like keeping a diary, as Henry Jones, Sr., said, is because I don’t have to remember what’s in it. I plan on starting an index in the coming weeks and updating it for each new notebook.” — Austin Kleon.

He wrote this more than ten years ago and didn’t follow through. Today when he is working on his fourth book, he is kicking himself for not doing what he knew he should do but didn’t.

Your system should consist of three things.

  • Ease and robustness. If the system is tedious or time-consuming, you will not do it. Now and then, you will slack, and things will fall out. You will need a system for both digital and paper-based documents. It should apply to everything. Even the writing that seems trivial at the moment will sound beautiful when read months or years later.
  • Retrievability. The system needs to be supported by a powerful search engine so that when you need anything, you know where to look for it and how to retrieve it with minimum effort.
  • Portability. This is to capture any idea you get at any time of the day. It should travel with you everywhere, even in the bathroom (especially in the bathroom to capture the ideas you will get in the shower).

“A good idea is not of any use if you can’t find it.”
 — Logan Heftel

Some Unusual System to Organize Your Work

I am fascinated by the filing systems of other writers, and Austin Kleon’s article prompted me to share my system with you.

Although not foolproof, some of the ways I am using to organize my work are working well.

Highlighter

Julia Carmen, the writer of The Artist’s Way, suggested a handy and method to picking up the grain from the chaff.

Those of you who haven’t heard of Julia Carmen, she is the one who suggested that the writers should start their day with writing Morning Pages.

Morning Pages are three pages (approximately 750 words) stream of consciousness, writing about anything and everything that crosses your mind. Usually, morning pages are gibberish, things meant for your eyes only, but now and then, they will have some nuggets that you want to save.

The best way is to do that, according to Julia Carmen, is to pick a highlighter and color the bits you want to save. You can then type them up in Evernote or whatever notes software you are using. Keep each idea/story separate and give them an appropriate heading.

Now when you need it, all you need to do is a simple keyword search.

Email

Email is an unglorified and somewhat underused way of storing your work.

I usually email myself whatever research I did on the project I am working on. I keep it in a separate folder. Most email software has a pretty powerful keyword search, and since my email is always open, my research is literally at my fingertips.

Blogs

My blog has become my repository. I can retrieve any story or a quote that I have used in an article and published on my blog. All I need is a keyword.

File Explorer

I have thousands of articles, research snippets, and pdf that reside on my computer under appropriate files. Although criticized mercilessly, File Explorer is the oldest filing system in the digital world and is quite intuitive. It has a decent search facility, and I have usually been able to find the document as long as I have given it a good title.

Evernote

I am relatively new to Evernote and use only the free version. Yet, I am suitably impressed with it. The search is swift, and it can even recognize text in images as well. So if I take an image of a page from a book and save it in Evernote, it will read it as if it is reading a text document.

Index for Medium Articles

Recently I started indexing my Medium articles. I created a Main Index that lists all the categories I write under. Each category is a separate post and lists the article I have written so far. I update them twice a month. It is working like magic. Now I can access any of my articles with a couple of clicks.

Your Takeaway

It’s very easy to write every day and collect a lot of material through research, but it’s not easy to keep track of it all.

You have to develop a system so that you can access whatever you need with minimum effort.

You either create your own system or follow someone else that works for you.

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Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash