Writing fiction and creative non-fiction isn’t an exclusive practice reserved for the very few. Just because there’s one Toni Morrison out there doesn’t mean there might not be a few others waiting in the wings. You have a story to tell. You may not realize it now, but it’s waiting to be written. You’ll find it in places you’ve already been, things you already know, and sights you’ve already seen. You can find it and you can access it.

You’re at work, sitting behind your desk. You notice a paper clip pulled just slightly from the edge of an actual paper document. You sit there looking at it wondering why it’s caught your eye. Nobody circulates paper documents anymore. So why is this one on your desk? Is it that important? You haven’t read it yet because it’s so unusual to see and so out of place. It doesn’t belong. It’s like junk mail you barely notice until it lands in the trash with the pleasing sound of ‘off my clean desk and out of my way’.

There’s a story in there, right there, in an old fashioned paper document that has slipped out of the past and into your view.

You feel a need to explain its presence. There are characters to be written, people who know why it is and why it’s there. There’s a setting to be written, a situation in which electronic documents thrive and paper ones fold. There are conflicts to be written. Who will defend the paper document, and who will not? What is the price of defense, expulsion from the fashionable techno-verse? Is there a character or person you can write that has the courage to defend what your colleagues consider indefensible?

You’ve got a story. It’s in everything you experience every day. All you have to do is take some time to take notice and follow my posts. Why?

I’ve got some advice for you. It’s helpful and it’s coming. You’ll be surprised it’s so easy. You’ll smile at its simplicity. You’ll be tempted to test it. Get ready to find your story. I’ll be right there with three powerful concepts that can help you write it down. Creative writing is as much a part of being human as living, loving and the ever elusive ‘pursuit of happiness’. Be fully human!

And begin to find your story by reading my next post.