I don’t need to tell you that the weather is miserable here on the plains and in most of the country. I long to be on a nice warm beach. I’ve been lucky so far and stayed in where it is warm. I get a little stir crazy but there are outlets. I do yoga on Saturday morning with my daughter and some ladies online. Yesterday afternoon I attended an online writing workshop presented by OWFI. There’s food in the kitchen and the power is still on. I am blessed.

Thursday night my local writing club had their monthly meeting. The speaker for the evening came down with Covid and they began to scramble to have a program. I remembered I had one on story structure that I had presented online for OWFI in the fall and I agreed to take the place of the presenter who was sick.

I showed up in my jeans and sweatshirt having spent the day with my old/sick dog at the vets. We are learning to give insulin shots. It had not been a good day, but my presentation was needed. So, gathering my strength, I stood before 15 of my favorite people and presented a program I had written for OWFI on story structure. In the end we had a handout and drafted a story together.

Maybe it was because I was tired, or maybe it was because we all needed a laugh, but I completely lost control of my audience as they came up with story ideas. One of the members is a middle school English teacher and before we were done, she was a superhero with duct tape as her weapon of choice. We authored a story and it was fun! We lost control and we burned off some stress. We followed the story structure of the three Ps (Person, Place, Problem) and a story was born. We learned and we developed camaraderie with our fellow members. Another story, another time.

Developing stories can not only be stress relieving but friendship building before being read by complete strangers. I don’t know if the story will ever really be developed, but we talked about the good and bad ways to develop a story. And we learned.

Another story, another time. What are you reading/writing this week?