Are You an Expert?
I Think You Might Be
Whether you know it or not, you are an expert at something. I don’t care how old you are, whether you’ve got a job or how much education you have.
You’ve got a mouth. It opens and shuts. Sounds come out of it. Wow. You can tell a story.
You ask, “What about?”
I say you can write about anything. So, say you are a degenerate couch potato around 34 years old who still lives with their parents.
I admit that the economy in any country is probably bad, and there is a trend afoot for young people to stay with their parents through their early adult years. When you start getting past 30, people will, I guarantee it, look at you sideways. However, there are some countries where the familial unit is tight, and having people of many generations living in one household is not uncommon.
Regardless of your circumstances, you, too, have a story to tell.
First, you could explain why you are still living with your parents. Are you a pothead? Are they elderly or disabled and need help? Are you disabled and need help? Is it because of the economy, and if you moved out on your own, you’d probably move in with a bunch of cockroaches to a leaky one-room basement studio? It’s your story; you can tell it however you want.
I’ve heard it said that the first thing writers write about is their own story. Once you get that out of the way, you can branch out and do other things. The only thing with that is your story is still unfolding, and you will never stop growing. Tell me you are smarter than you were 15 years ago. See what I mean?
Your point of view is important. You will never get to a place when you are all done. People continue to grow throughout their lives. You just get better. You will get better at what you do the longer you do it, and you will get better as a human being. Unless, of course, you are sociopathic or something like that. However, when you think about it, there are terrific stories about bad guys. The ones I like are characters who, on the outside, look like bad guys but aren’t really. Stephen King is a writer I admire who does that all the time.
Years ago, I thought I had not experienced enough of the world to write about it. That’s not true. You have a point of view and have already experienced enough of life to talk about it. Somebody somewhere is going to be interested. If 12-year-old kids can write a book, so can you. Granted, there aren’t many of them that do that, but some do. I’ve put a list of kid writers in the links section at the end of this piece.
You almost have to trick yourself into the right frame of mind. For me it was applying the old trick I used in order to speak to a group of people. I was terrified and would flunk classes instead of getting up to speak in public. Then, I realized each one of those people sat on the toilet the same way I do. That helped. The other part was I pretended they were interested in what I had to say. It took practice, and the second job I ever had as an MOS librarian (Military Occupational Specialty) provided me the opportunity to get accustomed to speaking in public.
My presentation was part of an orientation for newly arrived soldiers to the base. All I had to do was speak for 10 or 15 minutes about what was available at the library for them to look at. The most popular was the regulation that designated the length of their hair. I remember one winter, I had to compete with banging heating pipes. If that doesn’t force you out of your comfort place, I don’t know what will.
I am currently learning more about writing a novel and the points in the story. Before this, I thought of the action in a story as sine waves. They go up. They go down. So, the rising action in the story goes on getting more and more fraught with tension until the characters all get to the top of the cliff and tumble down. Then, they get up, dust themselves off, and do it again. I just did it by the seat of my pants. They call people like me pantsers instead of plotters. Now, I want to learn how to be a plotter.
Joseph Campbell describes it well in his book, “Hero of a Thousand Faces”. It’s been some time since I read that book. I’ve got a new one to read called “Save the Cat Writes a Novel” by Jessica Brody. I will also take her course by the same name at the Writing Mastery Academy. I got a six-month membership to it thanks to one of the discounted items offered by NaNoWriMo last November. For $18, I bought 35 PDF books about writing and access to the Writing Mastery Academy for six months. It was offered by a place called Humble Bundle.
To get it, all you have to do is participate in NaNoWriMo. The spring camp starts on April 1st, or you can wait until the summer camp starts on July 1st. You pick how many words you want to write. It doesn’t cost to sign up, but it is sure to force you to write. And we all want that, don’t we?
Thanks for reading.
The Links: I am not an affiliate for anything in the Links section. I just want to spread some good news. NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month — Always Free — Spring Camp April 1 — Summer Camp July 1 — The Big NaNoWriMo November 1 Writing Mastery Academy — $15 a month, or see if they don’t offer a new deal after NaNoWriMo starts. Save the Cat Writes a Novel at Amazon Wikipedia List of Children and Teenagers Who Wrote Books