The Place For My Writers Notes

Just an observation from talking to people at a conference recently. I was noticing how often I find myself telling some of the same little stories -- the time that a company tried to put a terminal on my desk as a status symbol, and I immediately moved it in with my programming team, for example. And other little odds and ends from my life.

Sometimes they are hard to remember without the stimulus of people asking questions or discussing things, but if you sit down and think about the stories of your life, you are likely to be able to make a list fairly easily. Think about the ones that you use when explaining your background. Or maybe the ones that you tell when people are talking about their problems. The stories of times in your life that you use to show other people that you understand what they are talking about.

Anyway, I was reflecting on those stories and thinking that they make a nice little set of biographical notes. And they are pretty easy to tell, since you already have practiced. It's mostly a matter of picking them out and spending the time to set them down nicely.

So that's the note. A suggestion that we all have these nuggets of personal stories that we use in conferences and such, and that spending a little time sketching them out is a useful exercise for a writer.

Oh - fair warning, I'll probably be tossing some of mine out here. Feel free to put your own together and post them to the list, too. Think of it as campfire stories, or maybe cocktail party chatter.

No matter how you think about them, write.