Your Story

Imagine you are writing a story.  Your hero will have good days.  And horrible ones.  Days filled with light and sunshine, and some so direly dark it's a wonder anyone gets through them.

There are demons, too, and faerie princesses with special powers.  There are lovers and enemies, sleepless nights and stormy weather, frightful days and then, out of nowhere, sunlit meadows.  They vanish again, because it's a story, and in this story trials must be faced and battles must be fought and victory isn't always just a step away, sometimes it's chapters, even books away, for the poor heroes stuck in trilogies or never-ending fantasy series.

Or maybe it's a romance.  Maybe it's a thriller that you're writing.  Or a mystery.  What about a sweeping epic?

Does it matter?  What matters is this: you have a hero.  You have someone in there, telling your story, living your story. You (YOU!), made a hero by yourself, with heroic traits and tragic downfalls, and sometimes you're in control and sometimes you're just not, because heroes have a way of taking over stories, and that's okay, because they have to do that to really, and I mean realllly, make it matter.

Now, take a step back and look at that story.  Look at that hero.

Imagine that story is your life, and that hero is you.  Imagine that you forge that hero every day through your choices and mistakes, your words and actions, your successes and failures, facing those dark days and dancing in those sunlit meadows, whatever shape they may take for you, whatever meaning they hold for you.

They're yours.

Because you're the hero.  And it's your story.

Make it a good one.