Sometimes I have no idea what to write about. Other times I am inspired and I build an entire world out of the small grain of an idea.
Today it is the first instance.
I looked at the white page allowing my mind to ramble trying to grip onto something I can build on. Random thoughts, things I have seen, read or done, but nothing really stood out.
Maybe just one thing. The story. All the stories around us. Let me explain so you understand.
It is all about the story. Stories.
With Christmas coming I started thinking about The Grinch and A Christmas Carroll, I love them so. And I was thinking I would love that, to create a story so widely known and recognized that it has become part of our common psyche.
In essence, if you think about it, they are both about the same thing, but they are told so wonderfully different that each character stands well on their own.
Then I saw this movie Ballad of a Small Player with Colin Farrell, I like him, such an amazing actor. I do not even know if I liked this movie. I watched it because I saw a piece on it on a morning show and it seemed interesting, the colors, the decors, Colin …, it seemed to have everything, but then when I watched I was like, yeah, Colin did not disappoint, but the story itself was a bit transparent and it did not manage to grab me.
I did watch it till the end though, for Colin.
If you did not see The Penguin, you gotta! That is a great story, well told and imagined! It is a series though, 8 episodes, well worth it.
And then, recently, I started reading in parallel Agatha Christie’s Autobiography and Agatha Christie’s Complete Secret Notebooks compiled by John Curran. I am fascinated by Agatha Christie and I suppose in reading all these I am trying to learn and grow myself as a writer, hoping that somehow I will find the Holy Grail of writing.
I love her books and I find it uncanny how she can pull you in and make you live in the story with her characters while you are reading, I can only dream of being able to do that.
One thing I did learn and I quite like it, her writing flows naturally, she is not forced, and what seems simple is actually intentional clarity on the part of the author working to support her readers through her stories.
Her Autobiography is an amazing read, of course she has curated it, but even so, to have her voice tell you about her life, it is an amazing experience and it provides you with little nuggets of insight that just make you like her even more.
So yeah, stories, they fill our days and they make up our lives.
The scary stories we anxiously tell ourselves when we watch the world, the fairy tales we tell ourselves when we step on the scale, and so on.
Stories are part of the fabric of our existence so much so that, at times, the boundaries between our lives and the stories that make them are blurred.
What stories weaved themselves into your lives recently?