Listen. There is no such thing as an ordinary life.
Think of your own moments of high drama. Take any room full of people, or a busload, or just a group of villagers at a community meeting around a battered dining table, and every single person there will have a powerful story inside them.
You know that already, for your own memory is loaded with your upsets and triumphs, your agonies and thrills. Sometimes we share them with others. Often we don’t. We just live through them and then tuck them away inside. They may be warming memories, or festering ones.
Perhaps now is the time to write at least some of them down. You realise it might be useful, amusing, rewarding, confirming or affirming for you to do this for yourself. You can do it, put the pages away, bring them out now and again to look back at, maybe laugh over (or cry) over, or maybe realise how very far you’ve come since your early days.
Or perhaps you’d like to record your life and times as a handsome document to pass on to loved ones. With the pace of life changing so fast, it’s ever more important that we write now about what our lives are like today, because very soon (as in tomorrow!) it will be history.
Another reason to write: shouldn’t you be dead by now?
By the time we get to midlife most of us will have survived something that probably would have killed us in years gone by. Don’t think it doesn’t apply to you because you’ve not had a major accident or illness. Before the 1940s just a small wound could lead to death, as there was no way to treat infection (other than using traditional remedies) until powdered penicillin was developed early in World War II.
Modern medical advances have made it possible for us to recover from all sorts of disasters. Look back at your life and you may realise that had you been born 100 years ago, your days would have been short. I’d be dead, for instance, felled 15 years ago by a septic gall bladder . One of my daughters would have died in pregnancy three years ago if a severe problem had not been picked up 10 weeks before her due delivery date. No, wait a minute – she’d have died of peritonitis in her mid-teens.
My husband would not have made it to kindergarten had he not been pulled through scarlet fever as a baby. One of his sisters did die in infancy, doomed by a malformed oesophagus that these days can be easily fixed by surgery.
We’re all so fortunate to have made it this far! It’s just another reason why our all-too-lucky lives deserve to be recorded.
So begin. Don’t just think about it. Start.
You’re saying, “But where do I start?” And, “I haven’t got time.” And, “It’ll take for ever.” Before you’ve even picked up the pen or opened a new file, I can feel your fear.
Here are my answers.
Start and go on with what excites you (ignoring any boring bits) because the excitement will keep you going.
You do have time because everyone has 10-minute time slots to play with. And that’s all you need.
It won’t take for ever because writing in short bursts will build your story file fast. As long as you pay attention to it a few times a week – even once a week – you’ll create something substantial in very quick time. And the size of your file is totally up to you. Who says you have to write a whole book? Short and crisp beats long and ponderous every time.
A former magazine editor who created three major New Zealand newsstand titles, Lindsey Dawson has also edited a range of contract magazines and authored seven books, including two novels. Her magazines have won top media awards and she is a life member of the New Zealand Magazine Publishers Association. A former member of the Broadcasting Standards Authority, she has been a judge of the New Zealand Book Awards and MPA Awards and has worked as a talkback host and PR person. She is currently a freelance journalist and book editor, runs writing seminars and hosts a weekly interview show “Letters to Lindsey” on Stratos TV.