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Write About the Mundane
How Your Everyday Life Is Someone Else’s Adventure
When I was a teenager with dreams of being a published author, I wrote stories outside of my experience because I thought no one would care about my own. I wrote about families living in 3-bedroom and 2.5-bathroom two-story houses behind literal white picket fences because I thought my life in a tiny apartment in Miami wasn’t interesting enough.
A lot of young writers fall into the trap of believing that their lives are too ordinary to be of interest to others. We dismiss our daily routines as mundane. But the truth is that the details of everyday life can provide invaluable insights to people from different cultures.
This is the essence of memoir and nonfiction writing — unearthing the extraordinary within the ordinary.
Every person has a unique story, shaped by their experiences, environment, and interactions. What might seem routine to you can be fascinating to someone else. I enjoy reading short memoirs about people living in different countries. This is how I learned about the rich food in Japanese convenience stores and the piles of garbage in the streets of Paris.
Imagine explaining the intricacies of the New York subway system to a young writer in Guatemala. The process of acquiring a subway card, navigating…
