Using LEGOs to Write Your Story
Get a bunch of LEGOs and snap them together to form a wall a couple of inches high and about a foot long, longer if you want to write a fat book. Get two little stones and put them on either side of the LEGO wall, close, so they touch the wall. If the stones had eyes, they would not be able to see each other.
The wall then is the untold story that keeps the one stone (your audience) from seeing you.
Ask yourself, What’s the story I want to tell? Sit down (or stand up) at your computer or with pen and paper, and start. Each paragraph is a LEGO. When you’ve written a paragraph, unsnap a LEGO from one end and put it over to another side of your desk. That one LEGO is the start of a new wall, the wall that will symbolize your story when you are done, when you have moved all the LEGOs from the untold story wall and created the told story wall.
The untold wall symbolizes confusion and lack of understanding and a deep unknowing. Once you clear off every LEGO, you have clarity between you and your audience and you have a whole new wall to celebrate, the wall of story!
The reason to do this is because writing a story can feel like trying to empty a fountain with a teaspoon. You need to see that every paragraph really is getting you closer to the finish line. Maybe you’ll need to make a bigger wall, maybe your first one didn’t give you enough paragraphs to get to the end. That’s okay! There are always more LEGOs for sale at Target! Build a wall the size of your house! Go Moby Dick on your self!
If you break down the walls that separate you from others when you are alive, who knows what else might happen! You might find you have another story to tell, and another. Or you might find you want to take a nap under the olive tree with your beloved, sleeping the slow afternoon away, dreaming, making things up as you go along.
