The One With Days 25 and 26

I know, I know. It's horrible that I am cramming two days into one post, but you have to understand. This weekend has been so relaxing (for the most part) that I have nothing to write! I am still asking God to surprise me, and in the little things he does, but nothing overtly astounding lately.

The most interesting thing has continued to be in writing. Here's my thing with writing. I love stories. I LOVE stories. I think we have covered this topic before. I mean, you KNOW how many books I have, right? Well, stories pop into my head all the time. I will be driving down the road or listening to some music when, out of nowhere, a new plot will materialize and play itself out in my head. I am feeling a little deja vu.

I've told you about this before. Anyway, moving along. Now, every once in a while, a story appears that makes it into the form of a short story...no novels yet - I haven't the patience. The vast majority of my little narratives take the form of scripts. Sometimes television shows, sometimes movies...it all just depends. I don't have aspirations of greatness or anything like that, but I do enjoy getting my thoughts down on paper. After a few weeks, I get bored and move on. Therefore, I have a drive full of unfinished stories. But lately, instead of boring me, a few of my stories have stuck around in my head. In the past, it's been enough to run the scenes I have stored up in my mind a few times and that's it. Then I can move on. Over the past month, these stories have grown and changed and are beginning to take on the flesh of actual, complete narratives. It's a LOT of fun! This weekend, I have been working on the flow summary (that's the shorthand version of a story that lets me get the whole plot outlined so that I can go back and fill it in) and this story shows no sign of dying down. I am really excited about it! And I don't really know why.

You know, we all have our dreams. I have lots of dreams. There are so many things in this world that I would like to do. What if this is one of those things? I am not naive enough to consider this some awakening of my inner writer, but the prospect intrigues me. What if this is part of what God has planned for my life later on. How cool would that be?

In that book that I just finished, Wild at Heart, the author often talks about the fact that if you ever got a man to honestly tell you how he's doing, he would say that he is bored. Society teaches us to conform to the cookie cutter. To be a man, you must have a job that keeps you away from your family at least 8 hours a day. You must not enjoy it. You must not keep close friends or hobbies. You are your work. So, men bury who they really are. They let their dreams and aspirations dwindle down to the tiniest flames. That's why I love the quote I gave you a couple of days ago. "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Why do we so often dampen the hopes and dreams of those closest to us? Why do we tell them to give up their silly fantasies and join the "real world?" What if somebody had told Samuel Clemens that he would never be able to make a living as a writer (although, maybe someone did...hence the pseudonym)? What if Frank Sinatra's best friend has told him that he had a great voice, but nobody ever makes it as a singer - most new artists never get signed and whither into obscurity? Why do we live in a society that tells men that stability is the only thing that matters? Sheesh, what a boring reality...