None of us were born yesterday. If you believe the past shapes the future, then the life we live right now was decided a long time ago.
We make up stories in our imaginations about each other to explain what causes people to act and say what they do. We make up stories about our own lives and behavior, too, stories that motivate us to do what we do.
Memories of the past, whether five minutes ago or fifty years, come to us in the form of stories. The stories we tell ourselves define the emotional stakes of our lives. In storytelling, a character’s backstory refers to events and emotions that take place earlier than when the action of the story is taking place.
Understanding your own backstory allows you a glimpse into why you act the way you do, what prevents you from reaching your goals and better appreciate the road you took to get here.
If you've ever looked at your life and wondered how you got to this point and how ever will you get back to where you truly want to be, if, that is, you knew where exactly that might be, by shedding the stories you tell yourself decides what happens next in your life.
Every backward-glance in our lives is an invitation to add to or subtract from the general narrative we tell ourselves, often obsessively, until our mind believes the story as the truth and becomes the story we live by. Some stories we make up about events in our lives have beginnings, middles and ends. Other stories we listen to are fragments. Sometimes we become so close to the stories of the past that any little reminder: a crude gesture, a withering glance, the whiff of perfume, and we again relive a past that is always present.
We can go back in time and fix and change what haunts us today. Turn to the Universal Story and create a new story. Discover the stories you tell yourself and rediscover emotions and pieces of yourself you’ve forgotten or thought were lost forever. Lift yourself out of the past. Seize the life you've always dreamed.
Just like the protagonist of your story, you, too, have a story behind the story of your life.
We explain things that happen to us, justify our feelings and relive the past through stories rich with emotion that we tell ourselves. We bring our stories into every relationship and fit them around every experience.
Memories about the past and fantasies about the future run in our minds behind the living we’re actively engaged in the present moment and emerge in conversation as we interact with others. Stories that originate in our past grow as we repeat them over and over again until they become the truth we live by.
The lucky ones have wondrous memories to savor and hopeful futures to imagine. For some of us, the stories we've locked ourselves in limit and hurt and keep us small and wounded.
In reality, stories are merely a collection of words we string together and weave with emotion to make sense of our lives and life around us. Our stories now influence every choice and belief about ourselves and life itself. While following tradition and society’s expectations into one dead-end moment after another, blundering into detours and wandering aimlessly, a map comes in handy.
The Universal Story is that map.
Let the Universal Story guide you into unraveling the crippling words that haunt you and form them into a full understanding of the true power that resides in you. Transform the stories you tell yourself from limiting to expansive. Break free from all the stories, relationships and beliefs holding you back. Transform your everyday life.
The Critique
by Luisa Adams
Barbed wire
Words,
The artist's soul
dangles.
Opinion's hoarfrost
Icy,
The creative helix
tangles.
Devouring egos
Flay,
The tender skin
mangles.
Critic's cord
Encircles,
The artist's soul
strangles.
(When I was asked to participate in a segment on criticism (literary/film) for the CBS Sunday Morning Show, my friend Luisa Adams, author of Woven of Water, sent me this poem she had written after receiving a particularly negative critique.)
When does criticism cross the line between "the analysis and judgment of the merits an flats of a literary or artistic work" to "the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on received faults or mistakes"?
When creating something out of nothing, which is what a writer does daily, constructive criticism can help grow brighter a writer's light. Negative criticism and voicing objection to something, only with the purpose of showing what is wrong and generally suggesting disapproval is often interpreted as a personal attack and usually serves to dim a writer's light (especially if the comments touch off a sensitive backstory wound and trigger self-loathing and the inner critic's crippling and negative self-talk).
I find writers benefit from a critique that is balanced between what is working and what could be improved.
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PLOT WORKSHOPS and RETREATS
A PATH to PUBLISHING using the Plot Whisperer Workbook: Step-by-Step Exercises to Help You Create Compelling Stories
Choose the NOVEL TRACK or the PICTURE BOOK TRACK for 4, 10 and 16-week workshops to ensure you understand concept, plotting, character development, scene development, action and emotional arc development, as well has how to pitch your work to agents, editors, and readers. Live online video chat technology. I recommend writers of all genres and all ages take at least one picture book plot workshop. Narrows all plot concepts down to 28 pages and 500 words for clarity.
WRITER PATH PLOT and SCENE RETREATS in the heart of the Santa Cruz MountainsYour story deserves to be told. Your writer’s soul needs to be nourished. Over a weekend you’ll learn how to identify and write the key lynch-pin scenes that build a page-turning story, master crucial scene types and go deeper into your plot by applying the three key layers that run through all great fiction: action, emotion and theme. Reserve your spot now for the 1st Annual Writer Path Retreat.
For more: Read my Plot Whisperer and Blockbuster Plots books for writers.
