I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!  I’m just back myself and have to pull myself together after the little getaway.  I find it ironic that the day I posted a blog about finding some time to write when you don’t have a lot of time that I lost all of mine.  I went away for the long weekend and found myself without an opportunity to do any writing.  I fell asleep each night exhausted from the day’s events, and barely had a moment to think of any ideas let alone write anything down.  I took my writing journal and it never saw the light of day.  So here I am, putting my nose back to the grindstone, because I have some making up to do…although, I’ll probably need to start out slow.  Whew, I’m still tired.

I saw this chart today, The Seven Steps to the Perfect Story, and thought I’d share.  Since storytelling has been around since the invention of language, obviously there are some components that are required and we need to be aware of them.  The foundation for these principals can be found in  Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces and Christopher Vogler’s The Hero’s Journey (Vogler’s book was inspired by Campbell’s), which I believe are essential reads for any writer.  As I’ve said, and I’m sure you’ve heard time and time again, you have to learn the rules in order to break them.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but if you want to do something, like write or play music or paint, I think it should be part of your education and knowledge base to know the history and evolution of the field you want to be a part of and those that came before.  I met someone who wanted to be a filmmaker, but wouldn’t watch anything prior to the 70s.  The art of film is only a little over 100 years old.  There have been great advances in technology that have therefore advanced filmmaking, but you need to know the basics, and some of my favorites are from the 50s.  How can you call yourself a filmmaker without any knowledge of 75% of the field?  It goes without saying that I did not continue that friendship.  It’s like wanting to be a guitarist and not knowing who Jimmy Hendrix is?  Or wanting to be a writer but you don’t want to read.  Nonsense.

So as the madness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday come to a close, while we wait for more holiday madness in the coming weeks, I wish you all the best of luck in finding a few quiet moments to do what you love.

Have a good week!