The Writing and Blogging Life: Do You Tell a Good Story?

At a time in my young life where most of my peers wanted to be firefighters, astronauts, zookeepers and veterinarians, my typical answer to the adult question ”So, what do you want to be when you grow up?” was that I wanted to grow up and ”tell stories!”

I learned to read at the tender age of three, and was already consuming ”teen dramas” by the time I was eight… and I found the whole idea of books and everything you could find in them to be absolutely fascinating.

In time, however, I learned that I really wasn't all that good at ”telling stories,” at least not from the perspective of being a fiction writing story teller. I was far more interested in people's experiences and the reality of life.

With that bit of background out of the way, it was little surprise to anyone that I took to blogging like a duck takes to water. The idea of simply writing vignettes of observations of people and the things going on around me felt absolutely natural!

Of course it was immediately suggested to me that I should be a journalist, but I wasn't really interested in having to follow specific assignments, and having a looming deadline over my head tends to completely kill my creativity. I expect that holds true for a lot of people!

The thing about creative ideas is that they seem to arrive from all over the place, and they seldom arrive according to some predetermined and convenient schedule… instead, they typically arrive in a jumble of ideas that need to be sorted out and perhaps even parceled out into multiple stories.

But what makes a good story? What engages people?

Most of my earlier impressions of story telling were the result of reading the books by naturalist Gerald Durrell about the experiences with his family on the island of Corfu, or the books by veterinarian James Herriot, describing everyday life as it happened.

One of the things I learned from reading their books is that most of the time everyday life tends to be far more interesting than fiction. And when we try to ”cook up” a good story, most of the time it ends up coming across as being rather contrived… which, of course it is.

One of the things that appeals the most to me about what we're doing here in this community this is a fact that we can focus consistently on ”the Internet of people.”

Because this is such a global community, what might sound like boring everyday accounts to the person writing them, is actually fascinating to somebody else halfway across the world who has never been to their country!

Meanwhile, it feels like a great privilege to have grown up to be able to tell stories, just like I hoped to do, when I was eight years old! I may not be doing it "for a living," but that doesn't take away from the enjoyment!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week!

How about YOU? Are you a good story teller? What sorts of things do you most enjoy READING? Do you enjoy reading about "everyday life" in other parts of the world? Do leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20220116 22:32 PST
x341