Spending Time, In the Early Summer (Encore)
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What is the purpose of the “nothing much” storytelling format?
Welcome. To stories from the village of nothing much. Like easy listening, but for fiction. I'm Katherine Nikolai. I write and read all the stories you'll hear on the Village of Nothing Mudge. Audio engineering and sound design is by Bob Wittershein.
In our show notes, you'll find links to our ad-free premium version, our other shows, and our merch and partner products. Whenever I start a new book and the narrator is just moving through their day, doing normal stuff, eating lunch and driving to the grocery store, I always think
Hmm,
tell me more. More of this, please, And I know that isn't the way novels are supposed to be built. There needs to be an arc, a journey set off by an inciting incident. But sometimes I wish we could just hang out a little longer. In the normal day descriptions.
How does Katherine explore the idea of a book where nothing happens?
I even asked one of my creative writing profs about this once, long before I had any of my podcasts. Can I write a book where nothing happens? I asked. I remember the way she sighed. Like She got it and she'd have been asked the same thing many times, but no. She said people have tried, but at some point something does have to happen. I don't think she was wrong, and this is maybe just splitting hairs, but I do think I've forged away here, as a writer and a storyteller, for the right amount of something and plenty of nothing. I tell stories that are conflict-free and meant to help you live more in small moments. They make excellent companions for walks or commutes, chores or crafts. If you feel like they're almost right for falling asleep, but not quite.
You're right on track. This is the daytime version. We have a night-night version. Just search, nothing much happens in your podcast app. And side note, I did literally write a book that published in over thirty countries, whose title is Nothing Much Happens. And it's available right now from your favorite bookseller or library. Now let's take a deep breath in through your nose. And sigh from your mouth. Do that again. Breathe in. And let it out. Good.
The dinner bell. We'd had one on the back porch. An old greenish copper one. That was screwed right into the clappered siding. Its braided cotton pole had to be replaced every ten years or so, as all that time in the open air made husks of the fibers. I'd never been able to reach it as a child, as it had hung an arm's length outside of the porch railing. Then I thought it must have been placed carelessly, accidentally in a spot none of us kids could reach. It wasn't till I'd grown arms long enough to wring it that I realized that it had most certainly been placed there by design. We'd have wrung it every other minute just for the fun of hearing its clapper sing through its mouth. At our house it was wrong almost exclusively at mealtimes.
To call all of us kids, as well as any strays we'd picked up from the neighborhood during the day, to the table. There was a house down the street with four siblings, the last from the bottom the same age as me. We drifted back and forth between our houses all day in the summers, riding bikes or running in bare feet over the lawns. We ate wherever we were fed, like untamed animals, and I assume our parents must have made a few phone calls to sort out who was on lunch duty and who on dinner. Who would make the giant pot of spaghetti that would stretch to feed all of us? And who had the big box of popsicles in their freezer? We would have loved to ring that bell. Because now that I think about it. I remember that we were consumed with signals, secret signals.
To call to each other. To relay some desperately important information. To let each other know where to meet and when. And what to bring as if we were all about to head out onto a spy mission that left at midnight and would take us into a blizzard. Rather than the much more likely meeting at the empty lot across from the middle school with our jump ropes. Once we tried blowing soap bubbles in our backyards, hoping that we'd be able to see them rising up over our roofs and take it as a signal of something I can't remember what.
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