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House of Good Fortune

So, we escaped from the house and work and obligations last night to indulge in some good Chinese food downtown.

And this is what came in my fortune cookie:

"You will have no problems in your home..."

Oh, please, please, please, please let this one be true forever!!!

Or maybe not. I wouldn't have this blog if it weren't for problems.

A few people have asked me about this blog and what inspires me to write. When things fall off of your house on a daily basis, it's not difficult to feel inspired. Frustration is a healthy motivator.

I'm not a good fiction writer. But I am a decent researcher and working as an ethnographer requires you to write down everything you see, exactly as it is happening, and then create a story out of it afterward so you can communication the insights to your client. Most stories follow a pretty classic arc, from disjuncture to resolution. Our story is no different, really. Our story is many stories within a larger story, many incidents that were triggered by a larger incident, and creating that tension is what makes writing--and reading--the story interesting to the blog reader.

I won't say writing a story, even your own story, is easy. It takes practice. Lots of practice. When I was teaching non-fiction story writing to undergraduate students in 2001, I abandoned the idea of having them work on a lot of stories over the semester after reading their first rough draft. Everyone had great stories to tell. No one nailed it on the first try, nor were they even close. Even after what (I thought) had been useful lectures and discussions in the classroom about the components of a story and how to approach it.

I made a radical, improvisational decision. I was going to make them re-write the same story--over and over--for the entire 14 week semester. This news was met with exasperated sighs and groans. A few students had never, ever been asked to rewrite a story before. Ever. But they did it. We worked on their stories for the entire semester, rewriting and editing and pruning and clarifying until the very last final they turned in. It was eye-opening for me.

Story writing isn't all about having talent. It's practice.

So is writing for a blog. I rewrite a lot of blog entries. I have a dozen entries in draft form that may never see the light of day. And I try to write whenever I can, just to keep practicing.

It makes it easier that the house is a character in my story. It isn't just Aaron and I. We're the protagonists, the house is our antagonist, trying to thwart our attempts at fixing it up. There is a natural tension there that is relatively easy to exploit. And little incidents that kick off a crisis happen almost every day around here.

Most of our stories go like this:

Act One: I brief you on how things are going. Then problems happen that make me crazy.

Act Two: I try to figure out how to resolve the craziness, and all sorts of things get in the way.

Act Three: We either solve the problem (fix the plumbing! catch the mouse!) or we change our perceptions about what is happening and just learn to live with it. (Insert helpful life lesson here.)

That's kind of it in a nutshell. I didn't invent this. It's a pretty classic model that has been around since before Shakespeare. You can use it too.

What made you crazy today?

UPDATE: Hah! Jocelyn is right, repeating my own words back to me :) Not problems, opportunities. Okay, okay. I'll take my own advice.

Here is an example of an opportunity story encapsulated in one blog entry:

Old House Photos...A Reunion Story

Posted by jeanne on August 23, 2005 at 4:16 PM

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