Finding Meaning in Everyday Moments (and Writing About It)
Lesson 2 of Quiet Writing: Crafting Stories from Everyday Moments with Andrea A. Firth
Welcome back!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and insights in the Comments! Great to hear your voices. Questions are always welcome. Onward to Lesson 2.
Now you have a list of everyday moments that you can draw from to start your quiet stories and essays. And you’ve gotten a start on writing more about one or more of these moments, adding description, setting, sensory details, and building out the scene. Continue to keep an eye out for what you notice in the everyday, add those moments to your list, and then go on to describe each one further.
In Lesson 2 we’re going to expand our stories by incorporating reflection and finding connections.
Here are the readings for this week:
Second Draft by Jason Schwartzman, Short Reads, 1/1/25
Perseids by Madeline Anthes, Smokelong Quarterly, 12/18/23
Showering with Spiders by Victoria Doerper, Short Reads, 2/19/25. Originally published in Orion Magazine (2017)
In Lesson 1 we telescoped in. We observed, identified and described everyday moments that attracted us. The next step in quiet writing is to expand the moment into something more.
At first, we’ll stay close and reflect on that moment to find meaning.
Ask yourself—What is it about this everyday moment that I’m attracted to? How and why am I drawn to it? Maybe there’s something you love about it, or maybe something about it bugs you and has gotten under your skin, or maybe you don’t know and want to find out. Fiction writers, when I use the pronoun “I” here, that is a stand in for the character. What a character or narrator wants drives a story, so consider who wants what as a question as well.
You’ll get inside the narrator’s or character’s head and share what they’re thinking. You will add this reflection, through internal dialogue. And sometimes you won’t add it—we’ll talk about what can be left unsaid and how that conveys meaning later in the lesson.
Then we’ll pull back, take a longer view, explore the moment, and look for connections. You can make connections to expand and deepen your story through details, imagery, metaphor, research, and more.
Let’s see how the writers in today’s reading expand their stories and find meaning.