The Stories We Tell

All of our lives can be retold as stories, some of us are just able to do it better than others.

People tell me all the time that my life sounds so fun, so odd, so... interesting. It's not. I've got a 40/wk that I actually love, but I'm also on the treadmill five days out of the weekly seven for half an hour, struggling to not eat drive-thru food more than I have to, and leaning a little closer to the mirror everyday to see how many more grays have spawned during the night. I also consistently forget to change my oil and lock my keys in my car ridiculously often.

I'm not any different from you, or any other average human being. The trick is to make myself *sound* interesting, which I've come to realize, is an inherited ability.

I spent five days in New Mexico with my crit partner, RC Lewis. It was awesome, except for the extra day spent in the airport. When I finally got home 36 hours later than scheduled my mom said, "Let me get my coffee, then we'll sit down and you can tell me all about it."

Then my sister called me to "hear all about it."

I suddenly realized that maybe not all families function in this way. Perhaps storytelling is something I was raised on, intrinsically absorbing the threads of my genetic plot as we invited anyone who had been on a trip, had an extraordinary experience, or we just hadn't seen in awhile, to "tell us about it."

From my German great-grandfather's accent laden stories of coming over on a ship alone when he was just fifteen, to my Irish grandmother's tales of growing up in an orphanage along with her five siblings, to my obscenity-laced overblown narrative of eight hours sitting on my ass in Albuquerque, our stories are part of a larger web that we've learned to spin from those who came before us.

So tell your stories tell your kids, and maybe when they're older they'll still want to sit down with you and share theirs.

Monday MORP

When I was in high school we had a dance called the MORP dance. Yeah, that's "prom" backwards. The idea of the MORP dance was that you came looking like crap, danced badly, and made a fool of yourself on purpose.

Really, MORP wasn't that different from prom for someone like me, but you get the point.

I'm going to reshare my vlog that I posted last Friday on the Friday the Thirteeners blog. Just so you're not wondering why the hell I did what I did in this vlog - the Thirteeners take Truth or Dare's every Friday from our lovely followers. Mine was to share a video from high school or share pictures of yourself as a teenager.

I decided to talk about boobs a little bit too, but that's just to make it more of a human interest story. Enjoy!

Been There, Done That

It took me a long time to admit that I'm really not that creative.

And guess what? Neither are you.

I read. A lot. It's kind of my job. A necessary by-blow of this has been that I've realized the old adage that all the stories have been told is... true. I can't tell you how many times I've opened up boxes of books (Yay!) only to glance at the back-cover material and realize it's been done before. A running mental commentary might run something like this (this isn't referencing any actual books, FYI, so don't go racking your brains trying to figure out what I'm referring to):

Okay, so this one is Hunger Games but set in Bulgaria and using cats.
Oh look! Turner & Hooch but with a dinosaur.
Hey! Romeo & Juliet but with a crustacean and a pearl hunter.

You get the idea. But here's the thing... the Romeo & Juliet title featuring the really attractive crustacean might have the zippiest dialogue this side of the Pacific, and it just might bring me to tears a lot faster than angsty Italian pre-teens with excellent wardrobes quaffing poison.

We've all been in love, we've all suffered loss. We all continue to learn from others and seeing the world through a pair of eyes that we weren't born with will always be a useful experience, even if the plot isn't the brightest star that ever rolled itself up into a gas ball.

Every time Mindy-Brain says, "Hey! I've got an idea!" I have to ask Mindy-Brain how it's been done before (not IF!), and how I can do it differently, give it the Mindy-Spin and make it Mindy's-Story instead of, Bogus! It's Jurassic Park with manic Dodo birds!

Always remember that your job as a writer isn't necessarily to come up with something that has never, ever been done, but to find a way to tell it again - your way.