Writing the Quotidian

by Iris Graville

Photo by Yannick Pulver

by Iris Graville, author of Hiking Naked

Quotidian.  I read that word in an essay I critiqued during my first semester in my MFA program. I had to look it up.  Ironically, it’s a fancy word for something that’s not, well, very fancy.  Here’s how the New Oxford American Dictionary defines it:

quotidian |kwōˈtidēən|

adjective [ attrib. ]

• of or occurring every day; daily: the car sped noisily off through the quotidian traffic.

• ordinary or everyday, esp. when mundane : his story is an achingly human one, mired in quotidian details.

While this word hasn’t become a regular part of my vocabulary, its meaning resonates for me.  Apparently, it does for some other writers as well.

Patrick Madden wrote in praise of “Quotidian Nonfiction” in Creative Nonfiction - Issue #44, Spring 2012:

“I prefer, in both my writing and in my reading, meditative material that considers the quotidian, that pauses and ponders, moving slowly, calmly—the kind of work that would never incite a controve…