Story Chapter 6- on my cover

(Source:  Chip Kidd at Ted)

All this introspective blabbering about story make me nervous. Makes me worried that I might come across as some pretentious w@nker who thinks they know it all. So I thought this week I might go with some thing a little more direct.

In the process of trying to find the source for the image above I ended up watching the entire Ted Talk I've linked to. It spoke to me on a number of levels. I love good design. I love holding real books in my hand. I have a keen interest in interpreting and translating my own story. And finally I have a terrible habit of judging books by their covers.

And that brings me back to quite nicely to what I wanted to write about today- something a little more concrete and a little less abstract.

I'm the writer, the designer if you will, of my own Story. So what does it look like?

If you look at the day to day- you'll see a stay-at-home Mother and wife. With a creative side line.

Figuratively you'd see: Calm, engaged, mindful, loving, creative, adventurous, playful, focused, balanced, simple.

Literally you'd see: school runs and lunches, laundry, stories, games, conversations, new places, good dinners, and love making.

On a every day basis I think the story I want to live would be yawn-worthy to your average reader. But what we never see coming are the cumulative effects of our day to day actions.  We don't see that our sarcastic comment can lead to a lack of self-worth. We don't see the minute tightening of a heart when a harsh word is spoken. We don't see it sometimes till years down the track when the cuts have become scars. We also don't see that talking about everything will develop a vocabulary of a thousand words+ before age two. That reading stories everyday will make a self taught reader at age four. That allowing the creation of mess in our kitchen will develop a confident dinner maker at age 12.

We all want a happy ending. But it's only by living the right story that we'll get one... even if it isn't the ending we intended.

If an artist was to portray the cover of my book representing the story for 2013- which will set the scene for future books this is what you see.

Me, arms out stretched as an old fashioned scale. With each arm straight representing the scales in balance. Each side of the scale would have representations of the most essential aspects of my life, Les, the kids, art making, food, books, writing, nature, home, Perth, and my friends and family. Scattered around my feet crumbled balls of rubbish representing the stuff I want to leave behind- more literal stuff like Iced Coffee, sugary foods, computer time wasters, too many belongings and more symbolic stuff like my mother, anger, sarcasm, consumerism, laziness, guilt, score keeping.

No prizes for guessing my star sign.... I wonder what part astrology plays in my story?

♥