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Being The Author Of Your Own Life

27 August 2010 4 Comments

Do you ever read through a book or watch a movie and think “I wish I could do that?”

Unfortunately no amount of wishing or hoping will ever allow us the ability to absorb super powers or find ourselves walking onto a starting rotation with the Chicago Cubs as a twelve-year old.

That doesn’t mean that the stories and plots and characters are a completely impossible daydream.  In fact, long before they were chapters engaging you in thought and blockbusters riveting you to the screen, they were merely ideas lingering in the back of someone’s mind.

Why then, do we live our lives vicariously through these fictional manifestations?

What stops us from being the authors of our own lives?

Photo Credit: Getty Images – Stockbyte

In college, majoring in creative writing, I spent semesters learning how to tell other people’s stories.  Plotting the nuances of character and setting, analyzing the beginning/middle/end, creating entire worlds for other people yet continuing to let my own world create me.

Watching the plot unfold and somehow feeling helpless against the turning of my own pages.  Living a life of re-action rather than pro-action.  Letting someone else tell my story.

That is when I began to apply some of the same strategies I had learned in creative writing to my own life.  Visualizing how I wanted scenes to unfold.  Storyboarding my future dreams and ambitions.  Creating the characters I wanted to be part of my life and seeking them out.

And as soon as I started applying these techniques and ideas, I started feeling like my life was my own.  And being belligerently happy with what I was forming.  Taking calculated risks, falling on my face a lot, but getting right back up knowing that my readers would always be cheering me on.

The hero and heroine of a great story are imperfect, tangible and beautiful disasters that you still want to win.  So I ask you…

Who wants to live a life that is irresistibly engaging?

Want to learn more about Being The Author Of Your Own Life?  Want to escape for 3-days to a lakeside retreat in scenic Maine, pictures straight out of the LL Bean catalog?  Want to “come home” and learn more about the person you yearn to be?

Then join me at Kingsley Pines where I will be on the Homecoming Retreat team leading one of the circles on Saturday morning.  The entire weekend (lodging, food, circles/sessions, yoga/dancing & much more)  for two nights is only $495.

Register today because space is very limited and going very quickly!

And make sure to check back to my site in 2011 (and in the interim, of course!)  for more on Being The Author Of Your Own Life.

Did you know I have a private newsletter that goes out ONLY to subscribers? It offers stories of travel adventures, writing brilliance, links to great content around the internet and other crazy shaningans.


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  • http://twentyorsomething.com Susan Pogorzelski

    Oh, how I love this post…Let me count the ways:

    1) The title of the post. Awesome. I wish everyone would realize that their life is their own story — the kind where we choose our own adventure. We play the narrator, we play the heroine. We choose our own setting (where we live), the characters we surround ourselves with (our family, friends, co-workers) — yes, including the antagonists, and we choose our plot, our theme. What exactly do we want our life to be about? What is important to us, what is our end goal?

    When we finish the last page of the book and look back fondly at the cover, what do we want to feel? I love this analogy. Love, love, love it.

    2) Rogue. Awesome that you referenced this. Growing up with two brothers, I’m somewhat of a comic book geek — somewhat, as X-Men is pretty much it for me. But Rogue was always my favorite because of her inability to touch and get close, and I always, always wanted someone to do a feature on her to probe into the psychology of that.

    3) Majoring in creative writing. Enough said. That’s a little piece of my own heart right there…

    4) Retreats. I’m all for them — for the relaxing kind, for the adventurous kind, for the ones where you *think* you’re going to relax (and write) and it ends up being the adventure of a lifetime. You never know who you’ll meet or what you’ll do or what you’ll learn. And everything that comes from them is extraordinary and only adds to the story of your life.

    Great post, Elisa! Here’s to writing our own story…one page at a time.
    Susan Pogorzelski´s last [type] ..This House Is Now A Home

    • http://www.opheliaswebb.com Elisa Doucette

      Aw, Susan, thanks! I *LOVED* Choose Your Own Adventure when I was a kid. And a teenager. And I bought a really bad Choose Your Own Romance Adventure a couple years ago (PS it SUCKED!) You are so right, though. Life really is a choose your own adventure. Sure, there are situations and circumstances which dictate a certain outcome, but the decisions you choose that get you there are your very own. The best part, however, is that you don’t even need to play out the scenes of only 94 pages. The plots, characters, theme, etc are as many as we want to make them.

      And yes, I love retreats as well. I’m ridiculously excited to learn and sit by a lake/fire/tree and take it all in. Not to mention the overwhelmng honor at being asked to lead a session!

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