7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 21
Years ago, I wrote a blog post about the difference between facts and story. I used an example of two people answering the same question — “how was your day?” One gave a list: did some spreadsheets, took some calls, met a new coworker, came home. The other told a story — the spreadsheets took forever because Mark kept stopping by, but Mark’s having trouble at home and it felt right to help. A new woman started today. They hit it off.
Same day. Same details. Completely different experience for the listener.
I ended that post with a line I didn’t know I was writing for myself: “If you are living a story you wouldn’t want to read, then it may be time to start writing something different.”
It took me years to take my own advice.
I kept living in bullet points. Went to work. Came home. Had ideas I didn’t act on. Wrote a few pages of stories I never finished. Knew what I was capable of but treated it like trivia instead of plot.
Then I started writing something different.
Not a blog post. Not a metaphor. I sat down and wrote a novel. Then I wrote another one. I started a daily blog and haven’t missed a day in 157 of them. I picked up a Bible illustration project that’s reached almost 9,000 people. I built a structure around seven daily habits and rode it through four rounds of forty days.
I stopped narrating a life I wasn’t living and started living one worth narrating.
The old post asked the reader a question: “How would thinking of your life in terms of story benefit you?” I don’t need to ask that anymore. I know the answer. It made me the main character instead of a bystander in my own plot.
The story I’m telling now has problems I haven’t solved, deadlines I’ve missed, fears I’m still fighting. It’s not clean. But I’d want to read it. And that’s the difference.
David Willis 