My mind is slowly shifting from writing self reflective motivational pieces to writing short fiction. Each day I listen to people and see if they have a story I can fictionalize and tell the world. I have even asked people I know for some funny or not so funny things that have happened to them. My mind is slowly shifting and I am getting ready to be the fiction writer I have always wanted.
I remember I won a poetry contest when I got to Canada. It was for a little Polish publication and I wrote about a little boy discovering that he got a puppy for his birthday. I read the poem the other day, having found it by accident and it made me smile. I smiled because I really really wanted a dog and there was absolutely no way that I was getting one while we were on welfare, living in an apartment building. But I look at my thirteen year old puppy today and know that dreams do come true. That little boy ended up with a dog after all, although it was many, many years later.
Now I am going to honour the second wish of that little boy. The wish to be a writer and involved in the world artistically somehow. I’ve always wanted to sing, or to play the guitar but that didn’t quite materialize. I have an opportunity to take that poem that was written so long ago and add to it wonderful works of fiction and become who I know I am.
I tell stories. Funny stories. Dirty stories. Any story really to anyone that will listen and not get offended. I would not make a good lawyer because telling fabricated stories will get you disbarred but telling stories in real life can make someone’s day if not change their life. Aristotle was right when he said that art is very important. It has the power to let us understand someone or something without having to actually go through it ourselves. Art is so important to our society. It is everywhere we go and all that we talk about, but somehow we don’t value it enough. At school it is one or two electives that are the first to be cut or underfunded. The focus is on Math and English. The focus is on Science. But I’ll give them Math and English and Science, and I will take fiction.
If you have any good story ideas, regular or a bit pervy, I’ll take them. I’ll take them all and give them back to you at some point in 2020.
I cannot wait. It’s like getting a puppy all over again!
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@austinkirk
