Lessons from dad: Write it down

  • Sep 24, 2022
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When I was little, I’d often run to my dad, excited, with a story bursting in my mind that I wanted to share. He’d usually be at his architect’s table at home, drawing something or reading, and he’d stop me right there. “Write it down.”

That was the first of two lessons dad taught me. I’ll discuss the second lesson tomorrow.

Writing it down made a world of difference. Because I wrote it down, I was more likely to remember it later on. I was more likely to develop the idea from a gift of the good idea fairy into an actual, thoroughly developed story idea. I’d be able to recall and share my story idea with others too.

And because I wrote it down, I was able to piece together scenes I was writing out of order to make a more cohesive whole story.

Had I not written it down, it would’ve been spoken into the wind and lost just like that. Preserving the idea when its fresh helps me save it for later. I’m terribly forgetful, otherwise.

Thanks to my dad’s advice, I’m a writer now.

Thanks, dad.