100 Day Creative Challenge 74: Story Promise
When I was ten, my class went on an excursion to Woodbridge House in Guildford. As we wondered around my imagination fired. I pictured children running around the home, servants, workmen. I imagined myself there in the 1800’s. I was there. I could taste it. Smell it. Believe it.
Back at school we were told to write a story about our experiences. I wrote and wrote and wrote until the pen indented my finger, marking me for at least an hour after.
I have never forgotten the feeling of words flowing from my head, through my body, through the pen onto paper. I’ll never forget the physical mark of the pen on my hand. I’ll never forget the mark on my soul.
I’ll never forget the day I first dreamed of being a writer.
We all need to honour the story promise in our lives. A story promise could be our potential, our identity, our destiny. If we don’t honour it, dissonance, disconnect and dissatisfaction derail our story promise.
Stories need twists and turns we don’t expect and, as long as the story promise we set up in Chapter One is fulfilled, the reader will be with us all the way.
Our lives can be like that. We all have a story promise in us. Something sown deep within that seeks to be released.
Detours can take our story off on tangents, but can actually start to make sense when things collide in one of those magnificent moments that causes you to say, ‘This is what I was made to do.’
I taught English for many years. I encouraged others to write. I read other writers’ work. I wrote academic papers. I wrote. But, I was on a major detour. One I don’t regret at all, but there was another story to be written.
Over ten years ago, I sat in my office and wrote a letter of resignation. It was time to honour the story promise of my life.
Since then I’ve published four books and have three more underway.
I’m living my story promise.
I wonder what your story promise is. I wonder what promises you’ve made to yourselves.
At home in my writing space. My library.
A writer will always be a writer. It’s not a choice, it’s a destiny. Stephanie Lennox
