Rambling

     Nothing in my life is interesting….

     Baloney.

     You are the inescapable you. Your mind is bursting with images, ideas, memories, fears, desires, hopes and wonderings. Everyone of which is uniquely and miraculously your own. If you can "recreate" who you are, then your readers will understand who "they" are—because they are as human as you are. “Fitz’s Day at the Beach” might sound boring if all I told you was that I went to the beach. Whoopdee doo—why should you care that I went to the beach? You shouldn't care...unless I care. If going to the beach means nothing to me, then a lame attempt on my part to describe my apathy surely won't engage my readers. (Though it might satisfy the homework requirements.)

     So then, write about something you care about. If it is even remotely important to you, you will be able to make it important to others as well. That is the power of art, and our art lives in the power of words. To find something you care deeply about might actually require some work—and so we ramble away in our journals searching for a place to begin; searching for an experience that hits you with that "oh yeah, that was cool" kind of feeling. A ramble is a way of creating a stepping off place to a more complete piece of writing—a piece of writing that is crafted as close to perfection as you can make it.


     In the good old days I had a shoebox on my shelf. In that shoebox were lyrics to unfinished songs, napkins from Friendlies with ideas for different stories; maybe a rock I picked up on a beach in Oregon—just so I could remember that beach. Even just remembering that rock is taking me back there; the huge driftwood fire; the blast of stars when I laid my head back on the pebbly scree—the inexplicable sense of time and place and perfection.

     The point is there's good stuff to write about, and there's bad stuff to write about. The good stuff captures your heart and imagination. The bad stuff is just that: bad stuff that ain't worth recreating. Bad writing stuff is much different than when bad things happen to you. Bad things happening to you is almost always interesting to you (and oftentimes painful) and as such it provides rich soil with which to begin our writing. On the Sunday that I am writing this Corey Dillon didn't have a great game, nor did he have a bad game. In fact, I don't think any sportswriter wrote about Corey Dillon. Who did they write about? They wrote about Rodney Harrison. Rodney Harrison's season—and very likely his career—is over: one twist of fate and his knee is shot. He's at the top of his game and life throws him a curveball. There's plenty to write about. Just think about it…

     Has life ever thrown you, or someone you know, a curveball? How did you or they deal with it? The same can be said of a homerun; whatever changes our lives or makes us think differently is worth writing about.

     So don't just think about it. Write about it, and ramble on until your story is told.