Narrative Paragraph #1 & the Bus
10/09/2018
Doing Something Right
“We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work”
―
My son EJ has been restoring that old blue bus you might have seen up at Windsor Mountain. He has been at it for a couple of years. We laugh now, because when he started right after high school, he figured six month's work, tops--and a couple of thousand dollars.
Here he is now, more than a year later, and there is still work left to do--and probaby double the two grand he planned to spend. Still, he has never asked for a penny; he does all the work on his own, and he learns to fix things, make things and repair things through learning, figuring out and asking. There is no luck involved. There is no hired help. His parents (cruel things) are not banking him in this adventure. EJ is literally on his own. Just the way he wanted it and just the way it is going to be. He has never called it a "gap year" because there is no gap in it; it is simply time well-spent, and I am sure he has learned more than most college freshman.
The magic is in the transformation. People gravitate towards the bus; they follow its progress; they ask for tours and rides; they wonder how a teenage kid could do something they would never dream of trying. The whole thing sparks imagination and shows what a bit of persistence, focus and cut and dirty hands can accomplish.
Writing is not that different. The empty page is not so different from an old hulk of tin: something can and should be made out of it, but, like anything, it helps to have a vision and to have a plan that reaches towards some final something that is breathtakingly cool and real and palpable.
Your Narrative Paragraph #1 assignment is like working on some small part of the bus--the alternator maybe--or the engine hatch or the solar panels. EJ doesn't go to bus and start hacking away without a pretty clear idea of what he hopes to accomplish; instead, he plans and learns as much as he can from Youtube videos, old engine manuals, mechanics and sketches he makes in Notability. He figures out the cost and lives within his means.
And damn, some amazing stuff has been accomplished.
You, too, can do amazing stuff by writing like a bus builder. Heck, I even gave you a plan, but I would bet that most of you have barely skimmed this plan, read the details or envisioned the possibilities.
I get it. I was once a young lad (more Tom Sawyer than anyone), and no doubt I could find a shortcut faster than you.
For now, I am happy with your work, and I am happy to see you trying. I mean, my plan is 4000 words trying to teach you to write 250 words. Go figure. No worries. We will do this again and again and again, and maybe we can get the alternator to work, or put some solar panels on the roof and take the bus on an adventure that will make Magellan jealous by exploring the deeper world within.
Thanks for reading and thanks for writing...
~Fitz