Inspiration and Excellence

Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash

My first short story, written when I was seven years old, was inspired by my love for horses and Free Willy. The story was a school assignment, but the characters, setting and plot were all my own. The words flowed from the tip of my pencil like water. Writing was fun. Writing was blissful. Forget a short story– I wanted to write a book. (I would share the finished product here, but I’ve moved 11 times since then, and I wouldn’t know where to start looking for it.)

A couple of weeks later, my Language Arts teacher assigned another short story. This time, I decided to tackle what was an increasingly relevant topic: bullying. Using my American Girl dolls as inspiration for my central characters, I sat down to write… a godawful piece about four kids chucking ice cream at each other.

I couldn’t write a story about bullying. I’d never been bullied! I barely knew what bullying was. I had no experience to draw from and no inspiration to run with.

My mom spent several hours reworking the story with me in an attempt to make it more realistic. I turned it in, got a fine grade and stashed it in a drawer where I wouldn’t have to see it ever again.

I was disappointed in myself. Was I always going to be limited to writing what I knew?

Flash forward. In October, my younger brother was asked to write a short story. He’s a sophomore in high school, so his assignment guidelines were slightly less lenient than those of my second-grade class. He doesn’t enjoy reading and writing quite as much as I do either, so I was interested to see what kind of story he was going to tell. I jumped at the chance to give him feedback and was blown away by his work.

Both of my brothers are gamers and take their hobby very seriously. They love the characters in their games like I love the characters in my books. They rename their Snapchat contacts after them and dress up like them for Halloween.

My younger brother’s story is about one of his own avatars playing inside one of his favorite games. It’s perfectly complex and absolutely riveting. And, like a lot of my favorite short stories, it ends on a cliffhanger. His teacher was a fan, too.

Even though my brothers aren’t avid readers or writers, they’re born storytellers. Why? Because they’re constantly mining inspiration. They’re always downloading new games and beating them multiple times because, as far as I can tell, they’re always finding unexplored levels, and secret missions and new people.

Life isn’t about what we already know. It’s about what we’re learning and how we’re growing. We should never feel limited by the line, “Write what you know” because our capacity for learning new things is unlimited. Excellence isn’t born out of perfect understanding. Excellence is born out of a willingness to keep trying.