Laura Pashby - Little Stories of Your Life

TO RUTH, WHOSE STORY ENDED FAR
TOO SOON. I WILL ALWAYS MISS YOU.

TO D, S, R & E. I LOVE YOU
BEST IN ALL THE WORLD.

Publishing Director Sarah Lavelle

Senior Commissioning Editor Harriet Butt

Commissioning Editor Sarah Thickett

Copy Editor Sarah Mitchell

Proofreader Catherine Jackson

Senior Designer Gemma Hayden

Photographer Laura Pashby

Head of Production Stephen Lang

Production Controller Sabeena Atchia

English Language edition published in 2021 by Quadrille, an imprint of Hardie Grant Publishing

Quadrille

5254 Southwark Street

London SE1 1UN

quadrille.com

Text and Photography Laura Pashby 2021,
except author portrait p256 Tim Dunk
Design and layout Quadrille 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders. The moral rights of the author have been asserted. The publisher has made every effort to trace the copyright holders. We apologize in advance for any unintentional omissions and would be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgement in any subsequent edition.

Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 978 1 78713 712 7

ALWAYS BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR THE PRESENCE OF WONDER.

E. B. WHITE

PART I: PAYING ATTENTION

PART II: FINDING YOUR CREATIVE VOICE

PART III: TELLING YOUR LITTLE STORIES

The little stories of our lives tell of simple moments when the everyday is transformed into something remarkable. The magic of sunlight dancing across a bedroom wall after days of relentless grey; swirling frost patterns etched onto a kitchen window on a cold morning; or an envelope dropping unexpectedly onto the doormat, the address written in a familiar, beloved hand. Little stories are small, but they shine bright: like fireflies, or sparkling water droplets on a winter branch. They concern the people that we love, the details that we observe, the small secrets that we keep and the memories that make us glow inwardly. Little stories encapsulate the reasons we get out of bed in the morning: they describe the tiny pleasures and commonplace rituals that see us through every day. These are stories of moments that we share, moments that we quietly treasure and that somehow make us who we are.

If we dont see the value of tiny moments, we will miss the little stories. If we fail to notice them, they will fly, unobserved, into the ether, but if we learn to pay attention, we can gather them up and keep them close. We can catch them as they drift by in the sleepy afternoon air. We can sense them (like voices echoing quietly just beyond the path) and we can follow their whisper. There is always a little story around the corner of the day. We meet them on the back seat of the bus, we come across them as we fold ourselves into a favourite chair in a quiet caf corner, or we find them tucked gently into the pages of a well-loved book. Little stories surprise us, on snowy mornings or rainy afternoons. We discover them when we find something forgotten in a pocket, they flutter out as we draw open the curtains on a sunny morning, or we unearth them hidden at the back of a drawer. Capturing and recording the little stories of our lives involves consciously slowing down. It means stopping to notice ordinary moments and familiar details. Telling the little stories of our lives is about cherishing what truly matters to us, making memories; capturing life creatively, and finding out what makes us who we are.

Ive spent the past decade using words and photographs to tell the little stories of my own life, during which time Ive developed my creativity and built a new career. Ive changed the way I see the world and the way I see myself. This storytelling journey of mine began on the day that, as a new mother (tired, a little bored and lacking in confidence), I started a blog. When I made the decision to begin to tell the little stories of my life, I began to see my everyday with fresh eyes and stopped feeling that I had nothing interesting to say. I learned to look for moments of beauty or poignancy, to seek out small stories and to celebrate the charms of the apparently mundane. I took the opportunity to explore my creativity on my own terms and, in the process, I shared the story of my life the changing vignettes of my kitchen table, my love of craft and books, and the details of the world I saw around me. I made connections and built friendships with other storytellers. My blog led me to Instagram and, in time, to opportunities: to write for magazines and websites, to collaborate with brands and to sell my photographs, allowing me to build myself a freelance career with storytelling at its heart. I truly believe that everything that followed came from finding the confidence to believe that my stories were worth sharing and my quiet voice was relevant. I do what I love, Ive found who I am, and it all began with little stories.

You may feel, as I did, that making your voice heard in a loud world is challenging and that telling your own story feels intimidating. In this book, I will show that you too can access the innate strength of your little stories through creative, mindful and thoughtful storytelling methods. You can find time to preserve the moments that matter in your life and you can use your stories to connect with other people. To begin a storytelling practice you need nothing more than a camera, paper and a writing implement so, as you turn the pages of this book, consider having to hand a camera of some sort (your phone camera would be perfect), as well as a pencil and a notebook. Notebook, journal, diary and scrapbook are different words for what is essentially the same thing: a place to write down our little stories. Whether you write on paper or in a document saved to a laptop or phone, whether you jot down snippets of ideas and half-formed sentences or transcribe a full daily account, it all comes from the same impulse to remember and to record. In this book I will use the words journal and notebook interchangeably. Journalling can sound like an intimidatingly soul-searching practice, but in essence it is simply writing in a notebook. Like many things it is most effective when it becomes a regular habit I would suggest aiming to jot down a little story in your journal each day but dont be disheartened if you skip a day, or days. Together, your little stories will nevertheless add up to a much bigger picture.

Little stories can seem like nothing, but they mean everything. They surprise us, they delight us, they even sometimes break our hearts. I believe that by using words and photographs to record the little stories of our lives, we can each create a patchwork of tiny tales and begin to build a sense of our overarching life story, which reveals something of who we really are. If you gather together the precious fragments that make up