Writer

Tell Me A Story

~ Donald J. Lund

Once upon a time, a little boy moved around quite a bit.  His family was on a life altering adventure from the chilly shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean, to the foot of the Rocky Mountains.  With change all about, he made up stories for himself and his little brother to help ease the tension of the new places and faces.  The boy would tell tales of kids taking the helm of giant sailing ships, soaring the seas of centuries before, battling pirates and monsters and winning the day.   As with the kids in the stories, the boy and his brother would overcome the real world adversity they faced.

Well, that sure seems where it all began for me.  And when I ran out of original material, the real five-year old me would read comic book stories out loud to my two-year old brother.  I had to get better at telling stories, as my audience grew to three brothers, and visiting cousins and eventually friends at sleepovers or scouts on a camping trip.  A storyteller never wants to let down the audience, regardless of size.

I was able to utilize elements of those first stories in a screenplay project for a class.  Some of the concepts still work, some of them need a lot of work, but that is the essence of storytelling.  Edit and improve and hopefully with that experience, I will tell better stories along the way.

Apparently, I am not alone in wanting to do this writing thing.  Research over the last few weeks, exploring the writer Universe around me, revealed that there are hundreds of websites, Twitter feeds, Facebook support groups, organizations from one coast to the other, all to help the writer in me, or you.  One of the messages among the reports about writers in the modern day claimed that over sixty percent of the people in England want to write a book.  I think that number sounds small.

We all have stories to tell and we do it everyday.  Whether it is about having to deal a dork in traffic, or a horrible customer service experience or perhaps finding a rare kind human in line at the driver’s license bureau, these adventures are in turn retold to our family, co-workers or some poor soul stuck next to us on the seat of an airplane on a four hour non-stop flight.  We love to tell stories.  I don’t mean relating facts in order as things happened, oh no, that is kind of boring.  We add some color, descriptions, some projections upon the characters observed in these ritual retellings and perhaps some humor or added tension to transform the experience into something more than what it was.

Now write it down, edit it a bunch and sell it off as a short story.  Not as easy as hanging at the water cooler and talking about a near tragic traffic experience or finding the most shiny silver dollar ever made on the floor of a bus station, but it is a potential starting point.

The immense number of humans writing and creating can add to the doubt dancing at the back of the mind of anyone attempting to write something entertaining.  However, I dream of a perfect world where we all take our turn at the campfire, relating our life adventures to each other, or just making something up to scare me, or confound me, make me laugh, or the best yet, make me think.

I am glad there are a lot of people looking to tell stories.  I hope whatever my unique perspectives and voices are, that they are enough to entertain.  Or at the very least, when whispered or read quietly in the dark, offer some comfort and distraction away from the daily adversity.

Why Write Now?

~ Donald J. Lund

Write right now.  And then every moment every after.

It does beg the question, why?

For those souls who discovered the writer within and then dedicated themselves to the craft at far younger ages than me, more power to you.  There is a part of me that tugs at the question of why it took so long to jump into this with both feet, but I’m not big on regret.  I think it took all of the moments, previous jobs, life experiences, piles of miscues and flat out failures to reach a place where the light only illuminates the path I am on now.

As noted previously, I’ve always known what I wanted, but the practical aspects of such a pursuit pushed the priority to write on to the back burner.  It took several life events to literally shake things up so radically, my entire life perspective was altered about everything I thought I knew.

I was certainly going through the motions, doing what society deemed I do next, finish a college degree, find an acceptable vocation, work a job 10-20 more years and retire to shuffleboard or travel to warm places.  And then on a day when I was walking around in a deep funk, my wife hit me with a question, “Why did you ever stop writing? You’re a writer.”

I wasn’t certain my loving wife, who has a busy career of her own even read any of my newspaper articles over the years.  The fact that she had, and she noted the impact those words had on her and the community did give me pause, and I had no answer to her question.  I really didn’t know why.

The next life changer was losing my father.  He was the healthiest, happiest man I knew and he was taken from this world far, far too soon.  A seemingly innocent misdiagnosis of indigestion turned into stage four esophageal cancer.  If they caught it any sooner, the incredibly brave 14-month battle could have gone my Dad’s way, but it didn’t.  I still wonder the how and why it happened.  However, his indelible mark on my existence was to truly live happily each day.  He wasn’t a laid back chill kind of happy, he worked very hard everyday, played hard, and laughed at just about anything.  It was his example of how to approach each moment that further altered my perception.

A few months after Dad was gone, I walked into a college classroom taking a course about writing plays.  As an English minor, it was a random selection and to be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to learn about this particular process.  The professor, a published playwright herself, began a class discussion about the excuses potential writers make.  We covered most of the bases, fear of being unoriginal, trying to write the next ‘great’ story versus simply writing, expertise on certain topics, fear of critique, not enough time, and a number of others.

Suddenly I was surrounded completely by kindred spirits.  Humans who shared the same passion and held the same fears as me.  For years, I utilized every one of the excuses posted onto the white board in front of the classroom.  I was not alone.

You know what else?  Writing plays is an absolute blast.  Any topic, any conversation, with proper format and structure can be a play.  Okay, so it sounds so obvious now, but it certainly felt like discovery.  My fellow students were all incredible talents, and they were each very kind and supportive at every step of the creative process as we all exchanged edits and critiques.  Our professor packed in more information into a semester linking every aspect of what it would take to become a successful writer.  The class was more than inspiring, it was transformational.

Everything I’ve done leads to this moment.  The military time to help my wife finish college, the painfully unpleasant corporate job that followed, the joy of journalism for a decade, the life in and around comic books and artistic creativity on multiple levels, and the seemingly endless pursuit of education bring me the experience I use to generate my own adventures on paper.

A loving supportive family, a wife who somehow likes me for me, two frighteningly literate sons, a Mom who reads my silliness, my talented brothers three, and lasting friendships across various state lines and several decades all helps a bunch as well.  Actually, I don’t know that one can be thankful enough of a great support system.

Why write now?

My path is clear, the excuses are gone.  It is who I am.  Words beyond this blog may or may not entertain others, the stories may or may not be of epic quality, but it sure is fun trying.