ALL THE SHINY THINGS IN THE NEST: Writing from a Place of Curiosity

BY HEATHER HAMILTON-POST

Once we disconnected DirectTV and all of our favorite sitcoms were canceled, my husband and I began watching a greater variety of shows. We found ourselves amidst a pandemic and entangled in programming that wouldn’t normally garner our attention, including a BBC comedy called The Detectorists, which centers around two eccentric men and their metal detectors, plodding across the countryside in search of buried treasure. Heartwarming and magical, one of the conceits of the show is that magpies will steal shiny objects. Fantastic, certainly, even if it isn’t true.

For me, good stories work in the same way. I see a glimmer of something everywhere I go, which isn’t a problem until I’ve held up my family because I needed to ask the young train conductor on our tourist excursion 50 billion questions about whether or not he envisioned this as his life’s work. It’s annoying, sure, but this natural curiosity enables me to find the story, both for the magazine and in my broader writing life.

In times of abundance, a magpie will cache excess food, burying their bounty for leaner times. I have a note on my phone that does the same, a word or a phrase that strikes me enough to come back to, to ruminate on, to savor. I like to luxuriate in an idea, an extravagance afforded by a publication like IdaHome.

Like the magpie who mimics human speech, it is the job of the writer to turn the idea, the anecdote, the infatuation, into the narrative. You’ll see this in the magazine sometimes, places where I (or other writers) have followed my obsessions—that something shiny—all the way to a story.

Recently, I had the good fortune of participating in an Orion workshop taught by Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams, a talented writer with a knack for inspiring students, pushing us to offer up the very most of ourselves, to look inward at the tender places that cower behind. There were 12 of us, and each Sunday for three hours, we showed up from our corners of the world. We were a global group from different backgrounds, decades, and professions. The writing that emerged, in only six sessions, was astounding. I was in awe of my fellow students for their work, yes, but also for the lives they inhabit, alternate spaces in which they are geologists, lawyers, mothers, human rights activists, botanists, and so much more.There are histories of trauma and triumph, joy, heartbreak. Each came to this place of writing by following a thousand different, meandering paths. Stories abound in a group of writers, but what IdaHome has taught me is that they’re actually everywhere.

Remarkably, magpies can recognize their own faces when they look into a mirror. Good writing allows us to see ourselves in the stories being told. It reflects the broader human experience in a way that surprises and delights us. Whether we’re writing about California Condors, female farmers, celebrities, sports, art, or anything in between, a reader sees something essential reflected back.

I have a tattoo on my arm that reads Nothing is wasted, a gentle reminder to myself to make something out of all of it. It turns out that magpies are actually afraid of the shimmer, but I’m not. Go toward the shine.