As I pass through this life, I often reflect on those who I know and those who, by some fluke of circumstance, only briefly crossed my field of vision. It is often easy to write about those whom you have known and to whom a relationship has developed over time. Their stories, for the most part are known and easily put to paper.
The ones that intrigue me are those that cross into my life if not even for a few seconds, on the bus, streetcar, or subway. Everyone has these at times, and I often wonder if they often dwell on the character they met, or what their story is.
As a writer, it is often difficult to put a story to the person who dashed on through your vision, but to the world around us it takes on a much larger significance. People want stories, fictional or not. If they didn't, no books would ever be published, and the timeless world of the Daily Newspaper and magazine publications would never exist.
To the journalist, these chance meeting stories are the lifeblood of the industry. I might interview a person for a story, and then never see them again, only the time spent doing the research before and the moment the interview takes place to its publication. After that, unless it is an ongoing event the story dies and gets' put in the endless archives of the paper of periodical. To a novelist, playwright or poet, these meetings are pure gold and the mysterious backbone of any excellent story. Why? Because you turn to your own imagination, and although a fictional image represents why this meeting stuck in your brain and flowed to your pen.
Creating a story about a virtually unknown person is one of God's gifts to those who use words to bring joy, fear, love, and adventure to a world that can sometimes be void of the ability to process any form of critical thought and expression.
Writers are the entertainers and sewers of seeds in a world starving for answers to questions, or candy that fuels the imagination and sends it soaring into the vast unknown. Without writers, where would this world be? No language, history, books, or movies. No songs to lift our spirits or make us cry tears of sorrow. A life with no writers is that of sheer existence and drudgery.
Next time you see that face, the one you can't let go of while attending on a corner or taking the transit, write about them. You might not know their story, but you can give them one. The first story I ever wrote in Toronto was about a Streetcar driver that I met as he gleefully announced each streetcar stop with funny little anecdotes to entertain his passengers. When published, I took the story, had it framed as well as my written notes, hopped onto the streetcar and gave it to him. We have never met again, yet he gave me my start in the business and showed me what being a writer was all about. It's about Life!
If I die needing to say anything to everyone, it's that we are all writers, each and every one. We all have stories to be told and need to be told. So, everyone who tells me I can't do it I say rubbish, you can. It just takes practice and imagination. We might not all become Pulitzer Prize winners, successfully published or achieve any notoriety at all. What we will have done is provide a written record of a life well spent.
When Robert Frost wrote about the two roads and taking the road less travelled, his words were for us as writers as a call to the pen and let our words tell the rest of the story.
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