Beginnings

Hello, stranger. I'm writing this from my couch, far too late at night because of an ill-advised evening coffee. My name is Laura, and I'm a writer. I suppose this is as good an introduction as any.

The Project

My favorite thing the internet has given us is the ability to peek into strangers' lives, especially the lives of creative people. I am endlessly fascinated by the minutia of creation: hours of invisible, incremental progress, the rituals, the self doubt, the persistence, the fleeting moments of inspiration and connection. To me, it is all worth documenting.

I want this blog to be my writing daybook. A log of my writing days (however sporadic they may be) and over time a portrait of my process, and incidentally, probably, my life. 

A daybook is not a new idea. The most famous one is John Steinbeck's Working Days, a journal he kept while writing Grapes of Wrath. At the time of writing this, I haven't read it, but I did put it on hold at the library. I'm nothing if not prepared. :)

The Spark

And so, Ordinary & Mythical was born. The title of this blog comes from a quote from Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I want to share it here because these words burrowed their way into my chest when I first read them and I've carried them with me ever since. I hope they will serve as a kind of ethos: no detail is too small or too boring because it is part of a life being lived, and in my case, a novel being written. Here it is in full:

"Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. We live and die, age beautifully or full of wrinkles. We wake in the morning, buy yellow cheese, and hope we have enough money to pay for it. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth. We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think. This is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important. Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn't matter."

The year is 2025. Blogging is a largely forgotten pastime in the age of social media. I could start a Substack, but I dislike their constant push towards monetization. I have a website, but that feels far too formal. I'm going back to my roots. If you're here, I hope you'll stay a while.