One of the interesting sidelights of being a writer and speaker is that people tell you their stories. Sometimes these are rambling and disjointed, involving an Amish great-uncle and a construction job in Klamath Falls and the family farm near Coburg, all while you're trying to finish your dessert and coffee*, and a line of people is impatiently waiting to buy your book.
(*and at times even trying to shield your dessert from flying bits of saliva if the storyteller is especially enthusiastic)
But sometimes people come up to me with a focused urgency and determination in their eye. "I think I need to write my story," they say, and out pours an astonishing tale of survival and triumph over extreme difficulties.
Last month, after I taught a workshop at the Oregon Christian Writers meeting, a woman came up to me and whipped out a few photos. "I just feel like I need to write my story," she said, and showed me these pictures of herself in a hospital bed with her head a swollen mass of blisters and raw meat. It turned out that she had tried to light a fire in a wood stove with an alcohol-based squeeze-gel lighter fluid and somehow it exploded in her face. Amazingly, her face is hardly scarred, but what pain she has endured and survived.
Yesterday I talked with a woman whose son is in Steven's choir. She had read my story about Steven in December and wanted to talk to me about how to get started writing her own story. Very casually she said, "I have Crohn's disease, and I've had over 100 surgeries." I probably gaped like a fish as she went on about how this bandage near her neck is for a port that she gets fed through when her Crohn's flares up, like it is right now, and the doctors praise her for having such a positive, energetic outlook but she feels like, "What other option is there? I'm supposed to sit around and pout??"
To both of these women I said, "Yes! You have a story to tell! You must write it down!"
Quote of the Day:
"One of the seven rules of a kid's life is "Healthy is always less yummy than unhealthy.'"
--Emily. No, she doesn't know what the other six rules are. She just pulled that number out of the air.
I know what you mean! As a writer, I sometimes despair at all the amazing stories out there, just waiting to be written... and the impossibility of writing them all. I appreciate your emphasis on encouraging people to forge ahead by themselves. However, along with that we need more tools to train writers.
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