Wednesday, September 25, 2013

The Call of a Writer

“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” - Orson Scott Card

Walking On The Beach by Vera Kratochvil
Discovery is something that I look forward to every day. My mind dreams constantly of finding something new. A possibility, a hope, a unique object, a memory, a future... I grasp at the thrill of discovery, sending life through my veins. With the possibility of a story, I feel happy. The amazing thing about discovering a story, is that it can come in many different ways. One that comes to me, whispered by the wind, or thrust upon me unexpectedly. Sometimes pleasant, sometimes not.
    A story can be lived, written, sung, told, felt, dreamt or yearned for. That is what is so amazing about discovering them. Like Orson Scott Card said, we walk past stories everyday. The person sitting next to us, they have a story. The penny we find on the sidewalk, it has a story. The small flower sitting in a spot of dirt, it has a story. We just don’t know it. But that is the art of a writer. We find stories, dig them up from the dirt if we must, catch them from the sky as they whisk by like a shooting star, or just spend a moment listening to a tree, silently waiting. People walk past us, we find a story. The sun warms our back, we find a story. That is the call of a writer, discovering stories.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Born that way

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.” - Ernest Hemingway

Violin by Vera Kratochvil
A writer comes in many different ways. Some claim that their destiny was fixed in them from the time they took their first breath or held a pencil in their hand. Others spend hours pouring over books, taking classes, practicing, to barely feel comfortable with the feel of writing. What some of us “born” writers neglect, is that even we make mistakes. Just because something runs in our heart, stronger than blood pumping to keep us alive, doesn’t mean that we are magically perfect.
This year I had a chance to do my very first violin solo for judges. I hacked away at that song for hours until is sounded decent, then I added some polishing touches. Wishing only to make it through alive. When I received the judges’ comments a week later, I found an unexpected compliment. It said: “You are a natural at the violin.” Upon showing it to my Mom, I said to her perplexed, “It takes me forever to learn a song. And I am so much slower learning the techniques. How could I be a natural.” She simply said: “Just because you are a natural, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to work hard.” I still didn’t believe it for a bit, but the concept cleared over time. Just because someone is born with a talent, doesn’t mean we don’t have to practice and learn that talent. But, like Ernest Hemingway said, “Let them think you were born that way.” And as long as the judge thinks I’m a natural, I won’t have to tell her how awful it sounded at first.