Write Down Your Stories…

Write down your stories.  Each of us has life experiences no other human being will ever have.  If we sift through those to find the nugget moments, we can share unique and wonderful perspectives in our stories.

Some may become the heart of a theme, or bring life and to the actions of a character, and make their reactions more believable.  Others might illuminate a way of looking at the world, or a lesson learned, that could help a reader find peace, closure, or motivation.

But even if one of your personal experiences or stories never make it into your works of fiction directly, reviewing them from time to time can inform and enrich the well from which you draw your inspiration.

And beyond this, in the age of social media, sharing the moments of your life with an authors practiced hand to put the reader in your shoes, focus on the core wisdom discovered, and to draw the framework of a narrative template they can overlay on their own lives, can create positive ripples in the cultural reservoir of our society.

Maybe each contribution to the flow is just a drop in the ocean (like this note itself), but I like to believe that the right insight will find the right person at the right time: a message in a bottle.

If you discover something of personal value and choose not to share, perhaps that message that was meant for that person at just that point in their lives won’t be there when they get there, leaving a vacuum that nothing else will ever fill.

So don’t hold back. You may never see the result of your contribution but, as an artist, that is neither necessary nor does it diminish the power of your work.