"My Life Isn't Exciting..."

“My life isn't exciting enough to write about things that have actually happened to me, so I'm forced to make my stories up from scratch.
— Barbara Park, author of the Junie B. Jones series

This quotation appeared in my e-mail today. I haven’t read any of Barbara’s writing, and I know nothing about her, but my first thought on reading this is that Barbara is rather lacking in creativity. With the right attitude one could write a fascinating paragraph, or maybe a whole story, on a blade of grass.

You absolutely don’t need to have an “exciting” life to write fascinating accounts of life as you live it. The only thing between ordinary/boring and fascinating is the ability to think outside the box and see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

That’s the purpose of this blog: To help ordinary people write extraordinary stories in about their own experiences in their own way.

Circling back to Barbara, surely she jests. Anyone who has written memorably enough to have quotes sent around in e-mail is obviously a creative writer of considerable merit. If she simply prefers to write about others rather than her own experience, that’s quite another matter.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal