What’s your strategy?
Call me old school. I have gray hair. I can accept that tag without too much fuss.
I never fell into the rabbit hole of video games or TikToking that sucks and slurps the gray matter right out of some folks’ heads and dissolves hours from their lives. So visual learning or escaping isn’t really my thing as a rule.
And I do like to read, voraciously even, when I have the right book or author or time available. So learning by reading isn’t a foreign concept. I’m a retired English teacher, after all.
No, I like to have experienced what I write about. Not just read about it or watch a video and then write. In today’s techie world, that’s probably old school.
But as I write, particularly narrative, I find that I need to have actually experienced something to pull off a decent passage. I need to make a physical connection. As opposed to my heart or my “internal movie screen,” as some teachers like to advise. I guess my body works as much as my head.
Maybe it’s my personality type. I tend to overthink things. Or maybe it’s because I have a good memory… or good muscle memory. My siblings remind me that I can remember things from before I was born. Not exactly true, but I do tend to listen and remember other’s stories. Maybe I even insert myself in them.
My best writing flows most easily from making connections to my own physical experiences. I close my eyes and put my body back into that experience and try to evoke my senses from that time. Then I work to convey those sensory experiences into words. It’s just an offshoot of the “write what you know” advice.
Don’t misunderstand: sometimes I’m more successful than others. It might take me a pass or two to craft a sentence or paragraph in just the right way, to hone it precisely well enough to pull readers into the moment.
But overall, I’ve learned it’s my senses that win the writing war for me.
Here’s an example from The Reconstruction of Mary Jane Edwards.
Shoving the heavy settee and mahogany side tables into the hallway counted as a physical challenge for the day. My arms might be small, but they were strong. Carefully rolling up the full-sized rug, so the binding was straight as a log, was both a physical and mental task. It took strength and planning to coil it as tightly as possible and then nudge it toward the wall without unrolling it. Using a straw broom on the oak floorboards to corral all the hidden dust and dirt from the past three months provided me some spiritual satisfaction. Almost like sweeping the grime from my heart. At least it was a start.
In the beginning of Mary Jane’s story, she’s putting in her time with fall chores, so she can have the quiet afternoon to herself as she grieves. How many times have I made a game out of some task, just so I could quickly check it off the list? I’ve never enjoyed household work for its own sake. I have to step back and admire my work and pat myself on the back to tolerate my time spent cleaning. Or I create a game or metaphor for the work to make it satisfying.
Later, when Mary Jane finally gets her first chance to teach United States Colored Troops, she takes stock of her new schoolroom.
I stepped into the frame building and took a deep breath. Was that sawdust I smelled? As my eyes adjusted from the bright sunlight, I saw a small table at the front with a chair. Conspicuously absent was a blackboard. To my left at the back was a large, sooty contraption with a chimney. It must be the wood stove. Well, no need for that this evening. The temperature was pleasant. Good thing, too. I could never get a fire started from scratch. One of my students always did that for me back home.
Rows of benches on either side of a center aisle filled the space. Ten rows deep and each bench long enough to seat four students. That was space for eighty altogether! Would eighty students show up for class this evening? How were they teaching without tables or desks? And they called this a new school?
I sat on the first bench, closed my eyes, and centered myself. “Lord, thee knows I am a teacher and thy servant. Help me do both well with these new scholars… and these pitiful resources.”
I’ve entered new classrooms, taken account of their unique smells, bemoaned the lack of equipment, appreciated sunlight filtering through the blinds, and counted out the desks and chairs. Closing my eyes and feeling myself relive those times in my life helps me better express Mary Jane’s experiences.
It’s revisiting those personal moments, whether they are doing household chores, traveling with unsavory smells and sights, or entering a new classroom that enable me to convey my characters’ personalities and values. I hope those experiences create more realistic connections to readers at the same time.
Maybe this is a piker’s approach. Maybe I don’t have the imagination to write from outside my world of experiences. I’m just writing what I know. But for now, it’s what I do.
What do you do to make your narrative writing real?
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