Look to Life’s Small Moments When Writing What You Know

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW. You know the expression. But what does it mean and how do you do it? First and foremost, it requires nothing less than chucking the Big Bang notion of reality TV, talk radio, and many best-selling memoirs, and instead learning to go small. That’s the rule: write small when writing memoir. How? Let me help, and let me call on the service of that adorable dog at left to help you, as well.

How to Find Your Story in the Small Moments

It’s in the small moments that life is truly lived. Lessons from the “large moments” are hard to absorb and rarely learned. How to master writing what you know? Consider a quarrelling couple coming back together. Only in movies does the lavish trip to Paris or the uber-bracelet rejoin an exhausted pair of people. In life, one night someone laughs again at another’s joke, another passes the peas and includes a touch of fingertips, and life together begins again.

Some years ago, Martha Stewart Living sent me to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to interview Janice Longone, the first designated Curator of American Culinary History. This is someone who relates human history through an ice cube—or a bag of coffee beans, tea leaves, or salt—using edible vehicles to roll out our tale. The kind of person writers need in their lives, she makes you think outside prescribed methods of narration.

In the basement of the William L. Clements Library, at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, we looked over a mere handful of the more than 20,000 items—including books, menus, magazines, and advertisements—she had recently donated. Among the most comprehensive private collections of such material, it represents “enough material for 1,500 Ph.Ds.,” she said, while regarding an intricate early-twentieth-century menu and dropping into our chat the word “realia.”

“What is that?” I asked, rolling the word around to nail its tricky pronunciation – re-AL-ee-ah.

“Small stuff. Collectibles. Isn’t it a lovely word?”

It is.

This ethic—the small stuff, the true collectibles, realia—is how to tell the tale. In writing, as in life, simplicity succeeds.

How to Write Small

I put that photo of Roscoe, the family dog, up on Instagram recently. The caption I wrote read, “In this photo you might see two oppositional forces to writing. Well, three, really if you count the kitchen floor in need of cleaning. The two I might see here are a loving and fun companion and my red gardening boots, both calling away from my work. Or do I see writing topics in both? Art is here. Seize it. Write it. Do not let alone or anything stop you. How? Write with intent.”

Almost immediately a reply came from Heidi, one of my writing students. The photo gave her the kind of epiphany that a memoir coach longs for in a client. She wrote me, immediately, telling me of it.

She, as she wrote, learned something about “writing close,” and in my reply I asked her to explain what she meant.

Here is her reply:

“For an instant, I saw the photo for what it was.

A dog.

That’s what my mom saw, too, when I did the visual litmus test with her.

“It’s just some old dog.” She shrugged off the photo, already bored with my experiment before I could explain my intention.

But my results rang clear.

Writing close means to stop. Slow down. Savour the moment. Shift perspective to an entirely new kind of perception that notices the meticulous, the finite, and the oddities of a scene. In essence, it is retraining the brain to focus on the little things to  see what pops.

Richard Price wrote, “The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don’t have to write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance.”

I try to find the blessings I am grateful for and be present while doing so, taken from my Book of Experience. In so doing, I pay attention to what is happening in real time. Report slowly. Value everything. Be alert. Write with regard. Find the details. Read between the lines. Become a wiretapped detective in search of pieces that define the present. Capture the essence of each subtlety as it materializes. That’s what writing close means to me.

So when I finally looked again at that pup in the photo, I saw conversation in his eyes. A message of unconditional love while he waited for Boots to decide what she wanted to do.

Mop a floor? Get the leash? Sneak a lump of dark chocolate before she writes her daily allotted pages? Get her gardening gloves? Find the squeak toy for a game of fetch? Maybe a pupper treat?! Who knows?

The open boot stance that signals mirrored love upon the multi-coloured tiled floor framing our dear, sweet freckled-faced pup, who is sitting so smart, tells me it does not really matter.

Being with her is all that counts.”

I treasure Heidi’s response for many reasons, not the least of which is for the terrific phrase, “write with regard.” I think I’ll put it on an index card and slap it to my wall. And why not? It’s great advice when learning to write memoir. Use the kind of regard that allows you to linger and savor and ingest the transaction before you. Do that, and you’ll be able to know what each experience is about and then — and only then — it will make good memoir.

What Does “Write What You Know” Mean?

Roscoe and Heidi are telling you how to write what you know. They are urging you to have a look at what is going on around you and then, with your considered expertise, write about what you know after what you’ve experienced, whether that experience be the small moment of looking into a beloved dog’s eyes or some larger experience like caregiving a loved one. In each — in both — are found a moment of expertise where you learn something. All too often writers merely write what they saw and leave out what they learned. They forget to write what they know.

Write what you know. Look back at Heidi’s words above and see how she came away from the experience with a new area of expertise.

She wrote what she now knows.

Now go do that yourself.

Need more help? Come see me in one of my many online memoir classes. I’d love to teach you more.