The Art of Making the Common Uncommon

On the solar eclipse + reading to be wowed.

In honor of today’s eclipse, I’m pulling this letter from the archive. Yours truly did not plan ahead enough to get the special glasses, but this afternoon you better believe you will find me down by the riverbank with my cereal box at the ready.

I will never forget the awe of the total solar eclipse of 2017. Zach and I had just relocated to Knoxville for his doctoral program, which put us in the path of totality, so we drove into the mountains for the best view. We hiked up to a ridge with a dam with our silly supernova glasses (photo evidence here—no shame!) and perfectly ripe Tennessee peaches.

There were picnickers with binoculars around their necks and a motorcyclist brigade in their black leather and kids climbing the rocks, fingers still sticky from their eclipse special edition Moonpies, everyone fizzing with anticipation. I won’t forget the way the sun just…dimmed, snuffed out, the way the birds swooped in confusion thinking it was nightfall, the magic of witnessing this cosmic event together. 

Though not everyone felt that way. I am paraphrasing from memory, but a high-profile CEO tweeted at the time that while everyone else might be staring at the sky through their cereal boxes that day, she would be in the office making millions. 

I don’t think I could come up with a sadder statement if I tried. 

Imagine being bored by the thought of beholding something bigger than yourself, something wild and other and alive. Imagine considering yourself “above” the cosmic orbit in which you make your creaturely home. This executive considered herself too busy to be bothered by the wonder of a world outside herself. She was opting for the security of the measurable, the predictable, all that can be calculated and forecast and scaled. 

Yet by doing so, she was opting out of the sheer gift of being wowed. 

And I really want to be wowed. Isn’t this why we read—for our world to be opened wide? Isn’t this what compels us to underline sentences—because they have awoken something in us? Isn’t this the very heartbeat of telling it slant—making way for surprise and discovery? 

It is human nature to want to be wowed. For writers, the slant is the art of casting the common uncommon. It is the art of revealing the astonishment of what has always been true, but perhaps unnoticed before. 

Let me give you an example, because I just don’t have the heart to land on the million-maker story hustling away under the fluorescent lights instead of the stars.

Environmentalist Paul Hawken returned wonder to the common most memorably in his commencement speech, 

“Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.”

Every night! There is a cosmic event. Every night, an invitation to participate in what psychologists refer to as the experience of “perceived vastness,” or awe. Now that’s a slant (Although not here to knock television—we contain multitudes!) 

As Hawken highlights here, we tend to tune out the familiar. What gets our attention, in writing and in life, is the familiar made fresh, and that takes craft and intention.

Instead of the self-evident, craft your big ideas to be singular. Aim for the exclamation point of “Wow!” rather than the closed-circle, “So what?” Create space for discovery and stage a double-take for your reader. Make ‘em a cereal box eclipse viewer of their very own.

A Blessing for Those Who Want to Be Wowed

None of us want to live jaded, but sometimes we need a little jumpstart. This one’s for all of us anxious, ambitious, internet-exhausted, cautiously hopeful writing folk. I hope you’ll get a chance to see the cosmic event today, or at least, glimpse the starts tonight.

Take heart and stay feisty,

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