I’m a recovering marketing director turned writer. I’m now allowed to think like a writer.
I still see photos and think where I could place the headline. I listen to my nieces and (try to) decipher which genre that might be play out in. I arrange fonts on a shop window as they might be best laid out for a Pinterest ad.
But I’m now no longer just a Marketing Director.
I’m a writer.
We’re going to go to the bookshop here in Porto, Portugal today that inspired J.K. Rowling for the library of Hogwarts. Sure, I’ll get a kick out of the architecture that inspired such a phenomenon. But I’m also excited to see how something (or nothing) can be turned into something else through only the imagination.
I want that for my kids. Today, for my own kids and my nieces. I want them to see how inspiration is made. How is something transformed from just a place into a story. A bookstore into a collection of books and movies that has a cult following like few others? How does that happen?
Is there a switch in our minds that opens up a world of imagination? If there is, how do we turn it on? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s always on, the portal is always open but we’re so busy that we forget or overlook the welcoming and inviting door and don’t get from A to B, from object to fantasy, from thing to story, from nothing to something.
That’s what writing is for me.
Or rather, that’s one of the many things that writing is for me. That’s what I want to share with my readers–and my kids. And my family. And anyone who enjoys turning nothing into something. For anyone who would like to discover a world beyond what’s in front of their eyes and next to their ears. To explore a world just beyond what we current believe and experience and delve into a world of imagination and “What if … ” and what’s possible in our worlds and what’s possible in our worlds for us?
That’s writing. That’s story. That’s imagination. That’s belief, possibility, and I’m not sure that there is really anything more exciting. Well, with the exception of one thing, but it’s related, it’s a part of it, it makes even all of this better, more fun, and brings it home deeper.
Love.
What if we can turn that nothing into something and share that with someone else? Then imagine that you take that same event and it’s with someone who gets it, who gets you. It’s not just that it went from one (you) to two (both of you), but now it went beyond just the two of you and it’s bigger because you shared it.
That’s fun. That’s why I wake up in the morning. To discover story. To explore the imagination. To share it with strangers, with those I barely know, and with those I love deeply.
If that’s what it means to think like a writer then I don’t see why it would be a bad thing if everyone on the planet thought like a writer. I’m going to the bookstore today. The one that sparked something in a famous writer. She took it and ran with it.
What are you going to see today? To hear? To feel? What are you going to do with it? How will you share it? What will you create with it?
We’re all writers. We’re all creators. The portal is always open. There’s just stuff in the way. Move that to the side and let your imagination run wild.
See you in the bookstore.
The portal to the imagination is always open. There’s just stuff in the way. Move it aside.