Tag: Writer

Have a linear goal…

Neera

I was going through one of my old journals when I found one of my favorite quotes:

“Then she understood that what she needed was the motion to a purpose, no matter how small or in what form, the sense of activity going step by step to some chosen end across a span of time. The work of cooking a meal was like a closed circle, completed and gone, leading nowhere.

But the work of building a path was a living sum so that no day was left to die behind her, but each day contained all those that preceded it, each day acquired its immortality on every succeeding tomorrow.

A circle, she thought, is the movement proper to physical nature, they say that there’s nothing but circular motion in the inanimate universe around us, but the straight line is the badge of man, the straight line of a geometrical abstraction that makes roads, rails and bridges, the straight line that cuts the curving aimlessness of nature by a purposeful motion from a start to an end.

The cooking of meals, she thought, is like the feeding of coal to an engine for the sake of a great run, but what would be the imbecile torture of coaling an engine that had no run to make?

It is not proper for man’s life to be a circle, she thought, or a string of circles dropping off like zeros behind him–man’s life must be a straight line of motion from goal to farther goal, each leading to the next and to a single growing sum, like a journey down the track of a railroad, from station to station…”

– Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged (Emphasis and line-breaks are mine.)

We all need linear goals in our lives to rise above the monotony of circular lives. That is the only way we have to show something at the end of the day.

Twenty years ago, I chose to write as my linear goal. It has not only kept me sane through the madness of the daily grind but also has given me a purpose in life.

Initially, I had little goals such as writing childhood memories, remembering those sounds, smells, and scenes from the past, and learning to describe them. Soon I started attending courses. The first one was a Life Story Writing course. An offshoot of that was a writing group that still has been meeting in my home for the past fifteen years.

I joined another writing group and practiced reading my writing to others.

Encouraged, in 2014, I joined a novel-writing course A Year of Novel at ACT Writer’s Centre. Five of the writers from there continued to meet after the course to continue working on our novels. We are still meeting and critiquing each other’s work.

In between, I won NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) twice, wrote several short stories, and started two blogs.

With writing as my linear goal, I am achieving little milestones just like Ayn Rand said in the below quote:

“[A] man’s life must be a straight line of motion from goal to farther goal, each leading to the next and to a single growing sum, like a journey down the track of a railroad, from station to station…”

10 Tips on finding stories in everyday life

Neera

For the last two weeks, I have been talking about everyday stories. Here are my tips on finding stories in your daily lives.

1. Become a collector of stories. You will not only find enjoyment every time you read them but also will learn how to write them. Stories are all around you, in newspapers, magazines, books, TV, internet. Austin Kleon wittily points out that you might be able to write a popular brain book with them.

“Here is a recipe for writing a hit popular brain book. You start each chapter with a pet anecdote about an individual’s professional or entrepreneurial success, or a narrow escape from peril. You then mine the neuroscientific research for an apparently relevant specific result and narrate the experiment, perhaps interviewing the scientist involved and describing his hair. You then climax in a fit of premature extrapolation, inferring from the scientific result a calming bromide about what it is to function optimally as a modern human being. Voilà, a laboratory-sanctioned Big Idea in digestible narrative form. This is what psychologist Christopher Chabris has named the “story-study-lesson” model, perhaps first perfected by Malcolm Gladwell. A series of these threesomes may be packaged into a book, and then resold again and again as a stand-up act on the wonderfully lucrative corporate lecture circuit.”

2. Learn to observe like Martha Sweeny or Jean Georges in my earlier posts: A story that will touch your heart and Evoke the senses with your writing. Both stories are about life’s little moments captured by writers’ keen observations.

3. Talk to people. In shops, at community places, in libraries, or wherever you can find them. Ask specific questions and you will find they are more than willing to tell their stories.

4. Go looking for them, like the one below, which I wrote about once walking through the woods.

“At about two-thirds of the hill, I had a perfect view of the dried Lake George, now covered with brown grass. The tall windmills on the surrounding hills stood as sentries as if guarding the lake’s treasure now that it was bare.  The slop at the back of the hill, from where I was standing, was covered with trees and broken branches. It was new terrain, quite unfamiliar.

The path I was following was covered by yellow leaves shed by nearby trees. A butterfly came and sat on my cheek. I jerked, and it flew away. I should have stood still and felt the touch of its tiny legs. Moments later, a tiny lizard blocked my way. This time, I stood still. It stood there for a moment, looking at me. I held my breath and waited. This was her domain. I was an intruder. I had no right to be there uninvited. She moved her head at an angle, had a final look, and then disappeared under a nearby log. I took it as a sign of acceptance. From that point on, I felt I was part of the landscape, as much as that tiny lizard was.” 

5. Use triggers to access stories in your memory bank. Like the story, my father’s hands triggered.

6. Look for a change in your life—wherever there was a change, there is a story waiting to be told.

7. Interview interesting people. A blogger made a very interesting blog by interviewing women she met in her local shopping center.

8. Talk to old people, they are walking repositories of stories.

A grandchild playing with his nana pointed at her wrinkles and said, ‘They are ugly.’ Nana laughed and said, “Oh no! Each one has a story.” The child hesitated and then shyly pointed at one of them. ‘Tell me about that one.’

9.  Listen to TED talks, subscribe to sites, and read about men and women who inspire you.

“Michelle Obama, a symbol for women, has successfully balanced the needs of her family and herself. Sky-high popularity, comfortable in her skin, now struggling against, not caved into the nation’s expectations. Smart as Eleanor Roosevelt, glamorous as Jacqueline Kennedy and devoted as Nancy Reagan, with pitch-perfect fashion sense, genuine smile, and fierce intelligence, not striving for perfection but by embracing her own authenticity. Every bit of her is saying, I am going to try to be honest, hopefully, funny and open, and share important parts of me with people.“

10. Research them. Every achievement, every invention, and every successful event has a story behind them.

A story that will touch your heart

Neera

As you can tell, I am a collector of everyday stories. Here is another one:

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—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 leans 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 toward home.

Every time I read this story, I get a lump in my throat. And that is the aim of the stories. To evoke emotion. To bring out a single tear.

Personal stories are all about change

Neera

Phillip Berry Osborne said:

Ultimately, the key to personal-experience stories is change. Where our personal lives are concerned, in fact, change is probably the biggest single challenge we all face and share.

That’s why the best personal stories explore our transition in life—if only to encourage us to accept ourselves in some new context or as we’re becoming.

Such transition or change is vital to storytelling since it’s bound up with the overall message that underscores any good story – and yet, too often, writers fail in this one key area of change and, especially the message that comes out of it.

Without a message, a story is like an egg without a shell.

Many of us, as writers, neglect this fundamental requirement.

Evoke the senses with your writing

Neera

E. L. Doctorow once noted, “Good writing is supposed to evoke a sensation in the reader—not the fact that it’s raining but the feeling of being rained upon.”

Like the one below by Jean Georges, a New York writer, and a master of sensory writing.

After a winter storm several years ago, Jean was asked to check a friend’s Long Island beach house while the friend was away.

Jean expected to find a ‘dreary scene—an abandoned cottage set among pines, stirred by mournful winds.’

But the instant she climbed from her car, she found a world of harsh beauty, discovery, and sensory delight.

The air smelled clean as I looked at a brilliant landscape. The sea was a violet blue, the sky turquoise, and the beach, which the last summer had sloped gently, was not steep, scooped out luminous. Crabs scurried for burrows and gulls spiraled down on them, like paper airplanes against the sky. At the water’s edge, empty shells that whisper when summer waves turn them now made shrill, whistling sounds.

She saw a couple walking hand-in-hand. The man leaned down and wrote something in the sand. She smiles at his age-old act, the epitome of transience: romantic declarations written and so quickly erased by the sea. Not so.

When she came upon his sand message—one word only, his companion’s name—the erosive winter waves were sweeping it, etching the letters more sharply and deeply until they fairly shouted their permanence.

They will be there forever, she thought… or at least until the next high tide.

What a beautiful story and how beautifully and simply it is written.

Why simple words are the best?

Neera

Everyday stories should be written in the simple everyday language that we all use. As Philip Berry Osborne puts it:

“Among most writers, there’s a natural tendency to get too exquisite and ornamental in their prose. Such writers spend all their time trying to pound the pig iron of language into the bright toys and gleaming blades of literature. They ignore the fact that the best stories deal with the small corners and verities of life—and you don’t need fancy words for that.”

Think more in terms of creating a small, delicate watercolor, rather than a giant oil painting.

You want sentiments that stop short of sentimentality—simple words and simple construction for what should basically be a simple theme.

You want the reader to taste, touch, smell, and feel the very experience you’re sharing.”

Ernest Hemingway, once replying to criticism by William Faulkner that his word choice was limited, wrote,:

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”