What is a vignette?

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2nd. ed.) says:

vignette 1a a brief descriptive account, anecdote, essay, or character sketch.

At times I’ve questioned whether or not I should publish a piece of writing on my blog. I’ve wondered if the stories I have to tell are too trivial, too self-centred, too lacking in meaning for anyone but myself. After all, I’m no longer an elite runner with exciting reports about international competitions.

But as I thought about it, I decided there are many reasons to write vignettes on my blog. I came up with the following:

1. Blogs are a perfect medium for vignettes. Blog posts are supposed to be brief. (I know, I fail.) Blog posts are immediate and (often) personal, tied to the moment, the circumstances, the season, what’s in the news.

2. Is there any reason to be ashamed of the “smallness” of what I write about? No—I say it’s good that I can be satisfied with small pleasures and events because they are what I have. I can’t afford to travel. I can’t afford to attend expensive cultural events or concerts regularly. I don’t have a job with earth-shattering consequences and responsibilities. Moreover, in smallness, one can dig deeper. Apparently mundane events, places, and people can grow in complexity in two ways; first, by using a metaphorical microscope to examine them more deeply—there are almost always more layers of significance and detail. Secondly, complexity sometimes reveals itself by accident: someone walks into the running store when I’m working, and a real conversation develops; a potentially perfect photo is revealed to my ready camera; a new song instantly elevates my mood; I learn something new from a movie, a video, or a TED talk that I happen to stumble across. Temporarily, I escape from the smallness of myself and my ego-centred existence in the world. These “accidental” deepenings require only the ability to be receptive, to recognize and welcome them when they come.
3. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by the sense of life’s abundance. Other times I forget. Vignettes try to capture a tiny fraction of those riches, to suggest the abundance that is still untold.
4. Storytelling can occur in a single paragraph or in a novel of over a thousand pages. It can be simple. Something happens to me or to someone I know, and for some reason I care. Personal stories are powerful if writers reveal themselves in a way that makes others care.

5. Vignettes are a weapon in the battle against the most common excuse for not writing: “I don’t have enough time!”
6. And after all—writers are compelled to write.

A good example of a vignette blog (not this one!)

Since I don’t have a new vignette to include here, I wanted to recommend a wonderful example from the blog of a fellow writer who was a classmate of mine in the Print Futures writing program at Douglas College several years ago. Jennifer Markham has mastered the art of writing extremely brief blog posts. Her vignettes are, above all, funny. She exploits her own flaws for comedy, but she also makes me care about her because she is observant, spunky, and unashamed of who she is.  Jenn’s blog, unlike mine, takes almost no time to read. Try her Mother’s Day post for a taste of the vignette world.

Little pieces of my everyday life from the past month