Gotta Write

I was driving yesterday and decided to do a little creativity game to get my brain ready for the writing I planned on doing when I got home.  Here is the game I created: Every time I stopped at a red light I would glance up at the rear view mirror and get a glimpse of the person driving the car behind me.  I then created a quick scenario of who they were and where they were going.

This turned into a lot of fun, especially since there are plenty of interesting people where I live.  My favorite one from yesterday was a man who was driving an old pick-up truck.  He was in his mid-forties and looked like he had just come from doing some manual labor that got him a little dirty.

He seemed ordinary enough until I caught him looking at himself in the mirror.  He sighed, smoothed his hair, and started to rub his forehead.  He looked a little distraught about something.

To me, he suddenly became a man who always wanted to be an artist, but who was stifled by the small Midwestern town he grew up in.  Where he came from, I imagined, people went to work in the local factory and there was no question about it.  As he glances at himself in his car mirror, he allowed himself the briefest thought toward how life could have been if he had followed his passion, but now with a family to feed and a mortgage to pay he didn’t dare venture into becoming an artist.

I was probably way off…he was probably just tired from work.

Either way, it was a great exercise.  I think that everyone can become a potential story, but you have to take the time to look around and notice the people around you.

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