The man challenged me to tell a story on the fly and I laughed and asked him if knew who he was challenging because coming up with a tale on the fly isn’t ever something I struggle with.
This didn’t have to be anything amazing, no requirement to produce a Pulitzer prize winner or New York Times Best Seller.
It just had to be a story I came up with on the fly so I said I wanted to share the The One Kiss That Changed Everything…Forever.
He scoffed and said I shouldn’t get into romance and I smirked and it said it had nothing to do with a tall brunette who kissed me first and ran away, no this was the story about how the Hershey’s Kiss chocolate bite created an empire.
This was about how enterprising men around the turn of the 19th century used an assembly line of little pieces of chocolate to become one of the modern day robber barons and built huge mansions in the heart of affluent Philadelphia.
“You cheated, you are telling a story about something that really happened.”
I smiled and shook my head, “Google the history of Hershey, I made this up on the fly.”
A few people have told me that writing is my gift and that my ability to craft words into something greater than they are alone is worth celebrating.
I am my biggest critic and have often wondered if others exaggerated my skill level. Great writing is subjective and if you have spent any time here you know that I take as gospel.
There are authors whose work amaze me because it’s beautiful and others who make me shake my head because they are trash.
It is logical that others feel this way about my work and that if one wants to succeed you can’t let opinions drive you one direction or another.
What really makes me scratch my head is trying to determine what I believe is most important. Do I need to publish a book to feel accomplished.
Do I need to try and stretch myself further than I have to feel like I did something with this or is blogging enough.
I don’t know the answer to these questions and I don’t know what will lead me to a conclusion though I have my ideas.
Sometimes I wonder if I have held back because it is safer or out of laziness.
Coming up with something on the fly isn’t taxing, but taking that and developing into something requires more. I don’t doubt that I can go the distance but haven’t figured out why I haven’t.
Got ample material that I have come up with that I could weave and or lace together as well as ideas for new material.
Maybe I am waiting for answers to some questions and will use those to drive forward or maybe that is just one more excuse.
Will be heading to Georgia and other places and it got me thinking about some past experiences and conversations.
Logged into an old email to try and find some old conversations and to prepare to go walking through the kingdom to verify if memory matched the written word.
It was like an itch I couldn’t scratch and I went tooling around the shed looking for the thing that would shed the light that was missing.
Tomorrow marks 2010 days but that didn’t take me quite where I wanted it to and so I smiled and stood up.
It will come or it won’t and I’ll manage just fine, but damn if it doesn’t irk me just a little bit.
