Daily Life Under a Microscope

“My life is so ordinary! Nobody would be interested!”
This statement vies with the desire to keep secrets and protect privacy as the top reason people give for not writing their lifestories. Poppycock! I’m pretty sure a centipede’s knee would be fascinating if looked at under a microscope and described with flair. Besides, what we take for granted today will be exotic to our great-grandchildren in fifty years. Wouldn’t you like to know what daily life was like for your ancestors 100 years ago?
In today’s guest post, Pittsburgh resident Bea Carter put her plain vanilla morning routine under a microscope in this delightful essay. With deft strokes of her keyboard, she has transformed the ordinary into a uniquely creative essay that  I think you’ll agree is remarkable.

Flexing my Economic Muscle
Rosie the Riveter has nothing over me.
Now a U.S. icon, Rosie represents women who worked in factory jobs vacated by men conscripted to fight in World War II. Saying “We Can Do It!” while flexing her biceps, she became a symbol of feminism and of women’s economic power.
Following Rosie’s example, today I do my part for America—not in a factory manufacturing goods but at home consuming them. In doing so, I am flexing my economic muscle.
Some greet the dawn with a chant or a prayer. Me—I begin my days with rituals and routines that, in the end, are all about consumption—using goods and services for which marketers have created demand. Bombarded by messages to buy-buy-buy, I yield, participating in commerce that makes our nation’s economy go.
I wonder what people would think a hundred years from now if they found this snapshot of products I perfunctorily use just to get from my bed to my breakfast table…

1. My hi-tech clock radio lulls me awake—its soft, far-away sounds getting louder and louder so I am not blasted into the day.
2. I throw off my bedcovers—sheet, bedspread and comforter.
3. I sleep-walk to the double-paned window to close it.
4. I patter to the thermostat to turn up the heat…
5. …then on to the bathroom (equipped with sink, tub, commode). I let the electric company know I’m awake by turning on the bathroom lights.
6. Next product: toilet paper…
7. Then water to flush everything away.
8. I squint into the mirror. (Hel-lo Go-ah-jus.)
9. I pick up my toothbrush…
10. …and squish some toothpaste onto its bristles.
11. After brushing my mouth awake, I remove my nightgown…
12. ..hang it on the hook…
13. …on the back of the bathroom door.
14. I turn on the shower.
15. The water comes out brisk and hot, heated by our efficient hot water heater.
16. I grope for the shampoo.
17. It’s in the caddy that hangs from the shower.
18. After I lather, rinse, repeat, I grab my bath puff.
19. I squirt some liquid soap onto it and proceed to scrub.
20. I eye my pumice stone, which I use to smooth the callouses on the bottoms of my feet. Not now, but next time.
21. Pushing the shower curtain aside…
22. I step out onto the bath mat.
23. I reach for my towel—a nice, thick, thirsty, oversized one.
24. I run my comb through my now towel-dried hair.
25. Then I pick up a bottle of special facial serum that promises to defy aging skin, and I apply it even though I can’t see myself in the steamed-up mirror.
26. Next I grab a tube of cream formulated just for the “delicate” skin around my eyes. I dab it on.
27. On top of those potions I smear an ample dollop facial moisturizer with Sun Protective Factor.
28. After that I grab a bottle of body lotion, also loaded with SPF, and apply it all over.
29. Now I’m ready for the next barrage of goodies. For these I don my chenille bathrobe.
30. Back in my bedroom, I sit down at my dressing table, a heavy, tall marble-topped Victorian piece that a childless Civil War surgeon left my grandfather. Since I inherited it, I am not counting it as something I purchased. But at one point in its life, someone bought it. And it traveled up and down the eastern seaboard before landing here.
31. I turn on a tensor lamp that gives out just the right amount of light for applying makeup.
32. I pick up my hair dryer and turn it on. In 10 seconds, my hair’s done.
33. Then I peer into my magnifying mirror…
34. …surveying my face in general, but looking for stray whiskers that have begun to colonize on my chin. For them I am armed with surgeon-quality tweezers.
35. I pick out some eye shadow (somehow I have three shades of nude) and apply it using the little sponge-tipped applicator that comes with it.
36. Then I give my eyebrows some love with a brow pencil.
37. I dab clear mascara over my brow hairs to keep them in place.
38. I pick out eyeliner—brown usually, but sometimes blue-gray—and apply it.
39. Brown mascara for my eyelashes is next. Got to have it, otherwise I look like Little Orphan Annie.
40. I skip the blush, which I generally use only at night.
41. I skip the lipstick, too, although I have at least 4 tubes of it. It’ll just wear off at breakfast.
42. My hair gets a spritz of hair spray.
43. Finally, I add a dab of perfume (not the real stuff).
44. Now I dress—underwear, top, pants, sweater, shoes and socks.
45. Opening my jewelry box, which I’ve had since high school, I don my watch and earrings. (When you have pierced ears, you have to wear earrings.)
46. Down in the kitchen, I fill up the teakettle with tap water.
47. I put it on the stove, which I turn on.
48. While I’m waiting for the water to boil, I use a juice glass to take my vitamins and medicines using filtered water I keep in a pitcher.
49. Then I flip on the little TV, conveniently perched on the counter, to hear the morning news show, which we can tune in thanks to our multi-tiered cable TV service.
50. I open our apartment door and grab the newspaper—I like to read the news while eating breakfast.
51. Back at the stove, I place a filter in the cone that goes with my drip coffee pot.
52. I ladle in some coffee using a special measuring spoon. By now the water’s boiling, so I add the water to the grounds in the cone. Ahhh…the aroma of freshly brewed coffee…I fill my favorite coffee cup anticipating that satisfying first sip.
53. But before that, I open the kitchen cabinet and retrieve a bowl, and open the drawer and pick up a spoon.
54. Open the fridge…
55. Take out some fruit and put it in the bowl...
56. …add some yogurt.
57. Settle down in my chair at the table, food, coffee and paper before me.
58. After half an hour or so of reading, I load my dishes into the dishwasher.
59. Then I mop up the counter with the dish cloth.

At last, I am ready to get on with my day. The first item on my To Do list: shopping—for some of the products I used just to arrive at this point.
Write now: zoom in on one of your routines and write it down in this degree of detail. Draw on memory to record a typical day or season in the past. That day will be a composite because one ordinary act blurs with dozens of others into general memory over time. You may be surprised at the complexity of life. Your descendants will be amazed. Include enough detail about equipment and such that they’ll be able to understand what you are talking about.

Writing on a Hamster Wheel

I’m working on a complicated story right now. It’s total fiction, with no basis in my experience, and I’ve fallen into a trap common to writers of any genre, the hamster wheel syndrome. I know better than to do this, but I’ve been editing the heck out of what I’ve already written rather than forging boldly ahead to write the story. I know where it’s going – I’m just having trouble reading the markers along the path.

Yesterday I had a Skype visit with Ian Mathie, a prolific cross-genre author who pops out stories like a cat birthing a litter. Already this year Mosaique Press has released two new titles by him, making a total of six book-length volumes published over the last three years. This year’s first, Sorcerers and Orange Peels, is his fifth book-length memoir covering grippingly arcane experiences in a remote African village while working as a water engineer. The second, Chinese Take-Out, is a fictitious spy thriller based on valid history. 

As we chatted, I learned that he is nearing completion on two more novels and another memoir. When I mentioned my dilemma, he confirmed what I suspected: “... I just write the story and edit later.”

As much as I value Ian’s advice, this particular bit was old news. Who hasn’t heard some version before? For example,

• Write with your display off to avoid distraction.
• Write by hand.
• Set a time limit for cranking out XXXX number of words.

None of this advice addresses my specific version of the challenge. I do a lot of my writing when not at the keyboard. I think about this story constantly. What would I really do if I were in this situation? Or, How can I get them out of the campground at 4:30 a.m. without waking other campers? Or, Should they eat breakfast or fast? What are the forest service regulations about dogs in the national forest? Does El Sabio need to be on a leash?

This type of question is specific to fiction. If this were memoir, I’d know the answers. But even memoir writers have dilemmas about what to include and how to frame it.

A fresh start

This morning I sat down to write, determined to tackle new content, but wrestling with a few changes needed in earlier material that had become clear. Determined to capture them without spending another morning rewriting, I tried a new trick, writing the edit concepts down, like story ideas. I wanted them in the story near the relevant points. I could have used Comments in Word, but I hate the clunky way Word handles comments.

Instead, I inserted virtual sticky notes. These small text boxes have a pale yellow background, no border and a 2 point shadow on the bottom to make them look real – you know how sticky notes tend to bend upward just a smidge as you apply them. Right-clicking on the box border gave me the option of making this first one the text-box default for this document. To make them feel even more “real,” I created a style to make the text look hand-written. As a final touch, I changed the document layout from even 1.25 side margins to .75 and 1.75, making side margin room for these stickies.

After adding a few notes in the margin and using strike-out to indicate which paragraphs need to be deleted or revised, I forged strongly ahead with the story.

Who knew one little confession to a writing buddy could bear such powerful fruit? That rope he tossed lured me off the hamster wheel. Yes, I knew this stuff before, but sometimes we need a helping hand from a friend to use what we already know.

Write now: Seek advice from writing friends for dealing with your particular form of writer’s block. If the advice doesn’t fit, thank them anyway, and keep looking for a solution. Before you know it, words will be gushing again. Post a comment about your experience with writers block of various sorts, or send me an email. We need to pull together to beat this writing dis-ease.

Memoir as Training Wheels

Mary Gottschalk has proven her versatility as a writer by crafting a highly acclaimed  memoir, Sailing Down the Moonbeam, followed by a novel, A Fitting Place. Both volumes are gutsy stories, and in this guest post Mary explains how writing the memoir prepared her for the challenge of switching to fiction.

Memoir as Training Wheels

Writerly skills are for naught unless you have something you want to write about.

The story behind my memoir—a mid-life coming-of-age experience after I left a successful career to sail around the world at age 40—had steeped in my brain for two decades before I put pen to paper. Not once, in all those years, did the possibility of writing a novel ever occur to me.

But as the memoir evolved and my writing skills improved, I began to see that “the story” was much bigger than “my story.” Sailing across the Pacific Ocean struck me a metaphor for life: you can’t control your environment, the route is not well marked, and you often end up someplace other than where you set out to go. The core lesson of that voyage was that you learn the most when you step outside your comfort zone.

Suddenly I had a story with almost infinite variations. I itched to explore them. Voilà, my first novel about a woman who never leaves home, but is thrust out of her comfort zone when she is betrayed by those she trusts most. It is my first novel, but it will not be my last.

Learning the Writerly Craft

I often think of my memoir as the literary equivalent of training wheels.

With a memoir, the task is far more manageable than with a novel, where every element—story arc, characters, plot points, scenes, point of view—is in flux until “THE END.” With an infinite number of possible events and characters from which to choose, even an experienced writer can have trouble discerning whether a problem lies in the writing, in the story arc and structure, in the pace, in the mix of characters, or some combination of them all. For an inexperienced writer, sorting it out can seem all but impossible.

By contrast, the outer boundaries of my memoir were established long before the first word hit the page. I knew where the story began and ended, who the players were and what role they played. The plot points and scenes were constrained by reality. My job, as author was to connect the dots, not make them up.

Connecting the dots was certainly not enough to guarantee a good memoir. If you believe, as I do, that a well-written memoir should read like fiction, I needed to have much the same set of writerly skills as a novelist. As a neophyte, I was missing many of them when I started out. In retrospect, one of the great advantages of starting out with a memoir was that when things weren’t going right, there were fewer things to be fixed.

As a memoirist, I couldn’t change the trajectory of events, so I had to focus on doing a better job of building tension and establishing cause and effect within the existing storyline. I learned, by trial and error, to recognize which events moved the story forward. I discovered how it felt when my story began to unfold organically. I learned that ruthlessly cutting out events that serve no plot purpose could heighten the emotional truth of the story, with little damage to factual accuracy.

Similarly, I couldn’t create new scenes or new characters out of whole cloth. All I could do was focus on re-writing those that were flat, on learning how to make them come alive, on using them more effectively to carry the plot forward. My focus was on mastering the art of showing vs. telling, on finding the right balance between dialogue and narrative. I learned that what I didn’t say often had as much dramatic potential as what I did say.

Throughout the often painful process of repairing crippled parts of the story, it was easier to push forward, knowing that I had a clear idea of what I wanted the story to look like when it was complete. By the time I began my novel, I had developed solid skills in constructing a story arc, both for the book as a whole and for each chapter along the way. I knew how to use dialogue and develop my characters through judicious use of scenes. I still had a lot to learn, but completing the memoir gave me the confidence to attack one problem at a time, to avoid being overwhelmed by the enormity of the task.

The memoir served as my training wheels. Without it, there never could have been a novel.

Bio

Mary has made a career out of changing careers. After finishing graduate school, she spent nearly thirty years in the financial markets, first in New York, then in New Zealand and Australia, eventually returning to the U.S.

Along the way, she dropped out several times. In the mid-80's, at age 40, Mary and her husband Tom embarked on the three-year sailing voyage that is the subject of her memoir, Sailing Down the Moonbeam. When the voyage ended, she returned to her career in finance, but dropped out again to provide financial and strategic planning services to the nonprofit community. In her latest incarnation, she is a full time writer. Her first novel, A Fitting Place, was released May 1, 2014.

Find A Fitting Place on Amazon and iBooks.

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