Hardly ever all there is

There's hardly ever a time in life when we've had only one feeling about something, and yet most of us are conditioned to judge and label an event with one word:  good, bad, happy, sad--you get the picture.  And that picture is really more of an animation than a true photo, a shadow of the reality.  I'm not saying that I truly want the whole picture.  Thoreau's...

Think back to your joyful moment.

1. What were the consequences of that moment?
2. What did you feel then?  Later?
3. What did that moment mean?
4. Were there any twinges you felt?

Write them down.  They may stick out now.  You may need to make them part of another document.  It doesn't matter.  While you're stuck in only one emotion, you're not letting yourself see.  Even if you never share the other feelings--good, bad, or otherwise--the act of seeing them, recognizing them, and articulating them is important.  Depending on the momentousness of the occasion you chose--and I asked you to choose a joyful one on purpose--those secondary emotions may be easy to verbalize or they may escape you all together.  You may find yourself turning to music or images.  Even the best among us have those moments when words escape us, and telling us that--literally writing, "My heart raced like the violins in 'The Hall of the Mountain King,'" or, "I was filled with the same wonder I felt the first time I gazed over the Atlantic as a child and realized I couldn't see a beach on the other side"--is fine.  Even Ezekiel wrote, "It was like unto the likeness of...".

The goal is to see.  Next week we will work on helping others see what you do.

Up and running!

Few joys in life tickle me more than hearing the neighborhood kids giggling together outside my window.  The delight is contagious, and I have to bite my lower lip to keep from joining in.

It's these shared feelings that compel many of us to write.  We know our stories strike chords that resonate in the instruments of other people's lives.

And those chords are the base.  We need first and foremost to find the point of resonance and strike there.  And to strike there, we must identify its point in us.

Rather than begin with our list of stories we want to tell, let's begin with one emotion:

Joy

Try any one or more of these exercises.  The goal is not to work for the sake of completion but to work for the sake of reaching flow.  If you want to spend more time on one question and everything begins to come out, then stop there.  Go as you are led.

Locate joy in your body:

1. Find it in your face.  Where do you feel it come?  Do you welcome the reaction, or do you try to tamp it down?
2. Find it in your skeletal system.  How does your posture change as you laugh?
3. Find it in your stomach.  How does your center feel as you giggle?
4. Find in your breath.  What happens to your voice when you're happy?  Does your breathing slow down or speed up?

Locate joy in a moment:

1. Think back.  When is the most recent time you felt those sensations?
2. Think further back.  When is the first time you remember truly being overjoyed?
3. Think with your gut.  When is a time the joy was so profound it left you breathless?

Locate joy in a rhythm:

1. Think of your walk when you are happy.  How would it sound if you were to drum it with your fingers?
2. Think of your laugh.  How do you laugh?  Is it one loud burst and then several small giggles?  These are your rhythms.  
3. Do you hum a tune when you're happy?  Do you whistle?  What melody do you choose?

Create an environment for your joy.

We often think that an external environment sets the stage for our feelings, but really, it's frequently the other way around.  We create an environment to match our feelings.  Create it in your mind and then begin to commit it to paper.

1. Start with the moment you feel the joy take root.
2. Expand from there.  Do not worry about the storyline, plot, theme, etc.  There will be time for that later.  Start with the joy and let it grow.
3. When you feel the flow has stopped, as if the pitcher from where it poured is exhausted, turn for a moment and glimpse out one of the windows of your environment.  Give it one more sentence, one more look, and stop.  As important as having an inside to the joy is also having an outside, a boundary.  Let that last sentence be the sigh of finishing.

I can't wait to hear your stories!

I Live in This Mess!

This is the first of a two-part topic.  In this post, I'd like you to consider exploring a "mess" from your life.  It can be anything: a literal mess and what caused it or an emotional mess and your conflicting feelings or a logistical mess and the convoluted plans you made to thread your way through it.

As you write about your mess, consider:

• Why the mess occurred
• Who else was involved in it
• Which aspects of your life were tied up in it
• How you felt as you resolved it (if you resolved it)
• How it has changed your approach to things (if at all)

Why concentrate on mess?

• Messes often occur in times of growth and transition.  They mark the process of your development and the strength of your character moreso than the initial and terminal points of your journey do.
• Messes generally result from moments when your control over the situation lessens.  Sometimes, you manage to reassert control.  Other times, you learn to disengage and let the mess pass you by.  Still other times, you may become stuck, which can result in hoarding.  Examining these times in your life reveals a great deal about your priorities, abilities, and coping mechanisms.

Why?

Why you remember or why you want to tell this story may be the most important question we can ask and the hardest to convey effectively in our writing.  Often, it feels that words fail to express the sheer import of events close to our hearts and many times the feelings and truths most clear and obvious to us are difficult to communicate.

Yet I certainly wouldn't stop trying.

So here are some ideas to help you think about locating and expressing your whys:

• Not in your story, but to yourself, fill in the blank to the sentence, "This story is important to me because ____________________."  
• Write and rewrite that sentence until you can succinctly state your because in less than 10 words.
• Don't be afraid if it doesn't come out right away.  Big feelings and big truths may be simple at heart, but they are felt and experienced in complex ways and are often buried beneath multiple layers of memory, rationalization, and emotion.  It can take time to dig them out, and that's okay.
• Look for ways, events, or memories that illustrate that truth at other times in your life.
• Write these less important stories first.  They will give you the practice you need to tell the crucial story that you want effectively.
• Consider that you may introduce portions of these stories later, in and around the story you really want to tell.
• Look for moments to emphasize that truth in this initial story.
• When you are finally ready to write this story, you want to consider issues like uniting imagery, foreshadowing, and changing distance in the event.
• Write and rewrite if this particular moment is important to you.  Sometimes we say that we don't have time to rewrite, but if your goal in this one memory is to communicate an important truth to your family, I can guarantee that your emotions and the complexity of your associations with the event will absolutely cloud that first draft, the second draft, and many others.  If it's important to you, make the effort to really do it.  Write it once or twice and then set it aside and come back.  Repeat as often as needed.  
• Don't give up if your intended audience doesn't get it.  Some may never get it, but others will.  Those others may just be the family of your heart.

Where?

When I was a freshman in college, my neighbor down the hall spent a long night trying to convince me to switch my major to geography.  In her defense, she was more than slightly drunk when she argued that geography was a perfectly marketable degree.  However, one of her comments stuck with me.  "I didn't know until I walked down the streets of Prague how very much of the city's workings had revolved around the ebb and flow of the Moldau, on its path, and on what traveled along it and in it."

I had spent two summers before, actually, exploring place in stories and had suddenly been aware of the role of where in the workings of my daily life and rituals.

On occasion, place can play a major role in your stories.  Stories that can either be written around place or ones that are enhanced by a sense of place include:

• A story in which your physical perspective allowed you to see something coming but not to do anything about it.
• A story in which your physical perspective allowed you to intervene first or cause the motion of the story.
• A story in which your ritual or actions were necessitated by the physical set up of something.
• A story in which the flow is interrupted by physical distance or obstacles.
• A story in which your perspective changes grossly over the course of the story (such as those stories of places that were overwhelming as a child but decidedly underwhelming later).

As you tell these stories, however, resist the urge to lay out the setting in essay format (there was a chair by the door, which was beside the steps, etc.) but try to add the details into the action of the story (as I crept back up to my bedroom, I slowly opened the door halfway, avoiding cracking it on the chair behind it and thus giving away my midnight run to the kitchen).

When?

Some parts of life happen on a schedule, but other milestones can come as a surprise--from your first word to your first funeral.  Occasionally, the time that something happened to you becomes important to how you perceive it.  Consider writing moments of perspective changes based upon time:

• How did you perceive the birth of a child after losing/not having one of your own?
• How did you perceive someone else's success after a failure of your own or someone else's failure after a success of your own?
• When did you enter puberty compared to other kids, and how did that change your outlook on things?
• When did you move out on your own for the first time?

As in all stories about changes in perspectives, make sure to start your story before the shift took place or we will never understand the magnitude of the change in you.

Minor Characters

Last week, we talked about the Do You Know list.  Today, I'd like to talk a little about a Who You Know list.

When we write our life stories, we have a tendency to stick with the events of central characters of our families, what those talking about creative writing might call scenes within the A-story.  But most stories (and lives) have subplots, or B-stories, which add flavor to the whole.  Many of those minor characters are some of our most beloved, from Dickens's Tiny Tim to Lucas's R2-D2.  Adding their stories to your own collection will add flavor and tell us so much more about the time and community in which you have lived.

Consider these questions:

• Which of your acquaintances has made a significant impact on you?
• Which of your neighbors has always stuck in your mind?
• Who had a unique outlook on life?
• Was there a person who, because of their routine, you frequently met while going about your daily activities?
• Is there a person with whom you were not necessarily close but who always managed to provoke an emotional response from you (could be happiness, amusement, annoyance, comfort, etc.)?

Consider adding you thoughts on them to your work as well.