Asked to choose five objects from a bag, I was supposed to tell a story with these objects to the person interviewing me, a U.C. Davis M.I.N.D. Institute researcher. The process reminded me of what goes into writing a column.
Some of the objects, being realistic, lent themselves most readily to a literal representation. A miniature candlestick was just as its shape suggested. A miniature pair of spectacles suggested “Harry Potter” to me.
Who could more incongruously carry a dainty paper umbrella than the giant Hagrid? Add a toy car that was, by and large, a car ? even when bewitched by Hagrid to convey him to Privet Drive. But a piece of string could be a piece of string or it could be an extendable ear, given to Harry by the Weasley twins.
In the end, I assembled the items into a cohesive narrative: Hagrid takes Harry to Station Nine-and-Three-Quarters to catch the Hogwarts Express. An invisible servant with a candlestick lights their way through the halls of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
As a writer, I do much the same thing with a “bag” that contains my experiences.
Into this bag, I might have placed things that actually happened to me; but the bag might also contain insights by other people that were relevant and meaningful to me. When writing my column, I might pull out any number of combinations.
When I write about bullying, for example, I often bring up things that actually happened to me. But I incorporate quotes from other people in order to hopefully demonstrate that many, many other people take the matter very seriously. I also present “best practices” from some of our local schools to show how people address the problem.
In other examples, somebody says something and it reminds me of something I read.
I might read something in a book that reminds me of something in a magazine.
Frequently the act of writing in a journal ? processing the events of the day ? gives narrative shape to these events and inspires me to share them in a more public way. A column that I wrote about being “blamed” for 9/11 began as a journal entry.
Even narrating my “Harry Potter” story about the five objects chosen from a bag reminds me of a radio broadcast that I heard on PBS. It suggested that toys that are too “realistic” discourage imaginative play, which is a key component to children successfully developing “executive function.”
(My husband Jonathan knows much more than I about “executive function” by the way ? he wrote a series of articles on the subject that appeared in Lake County Magazine.)
So where I might see an extendable ear in a piece of string, I am likely to see a toy car as only a representation of the actual thing.
And there you have it: those five objects chosen at the U.C. Davis M.I.N.D. Institute assembled into a narrative ? and a real-life occurrence combined with an anecdote about something I heard on the radio. Assemble these experiences in varying ways and I”ve written my column for the week!
How many other column ideas can derive from alternative combinations? Part of the fun in writing each week is exploring these possibilities.
Cynthia Parkhill is the interim managing editor for the Record-Bee and the editor of the Clearlake Observer-American. She can be reached at cparkhill@clearlakeobserver.com
