The thing about Raymond Carver was his ability to focus on the mundane and reveal the soft underbelly of life as we, for the most part, live it day to day.
He took people going about their empty lives and showed us that if meaning exists, it’s found in the humdrum, the small transitions that catch us off guard, the microscopic steps and missteps that haunt us when we look back.
And we’re always looking back.
For Carver, the participants in the play don’t stop and try to sort out what will happen if. They don’t place today in context with tomorrow. Rather, they do the thing that’s gotten hold of them. For his characters, life did not gain wisdom incrementally, a learned lesson stacked on top of a disaster. No, his people acted like us. They blundered through the moment not concerned with the fallout they realized must follow.
Which brings me to today’s subject.
Do you write about the mundane things in life, or do you skip over them?
I don’t mean you. I mean us. Do we skip average events while chasing the next scintillation, the sudden life-changing surprise, the heroic deed accomplished?
One of the biggest questions about creative writing is whether the world at its center is an escapist dreamland or a head-on treatment of plain ol’ living.
Maybe the difference between genre and literary fiction is nothing more than the thrill of scintillation versus the certainty of everyday living.
Here’s today’s 500-word exercise: Write about four people in an ICU waiting room. They are related to each other and the patient in the final hours of palliative care. Each person is allowed three minutes of private time with the patient. You can write about their interactions in the waiting room, their individual audiences with the patient, or both. You can write about their thoughts, words, and body language.
But you can’t use any tricks. The patient doesn’t rally or walk out of the ICU alive.
This is the quintessential human situation many of us face at some point. Its impact haunts us from that day forward, even as we attempt to suppress it. There is never a more moving moment, although we wander through life, substituting highlights for certainties.
And that’s why we must learn to write about mundane moments.
I agree. I think the mundane moments can be the most profound and difficult to write.