Inspiring a New Generation

This week I had the opportunity to do something I've never done before. It was a book-related event, and yet, it wasn't about sales. These people had no money to buy books. In fact, it cost me a little to do this event, but it was so fun and so worth it.

Those people were kids!

I had the wonderful opportunity this past Friday to share my love of storytelling with a local homeschool co-op—kids from kindergarten to 6th grade. I talked about how books get published and how books are written. We talked about what makes a story.

They all had wonderful imaginations. Some of the kids want to be authors when they grow up. Others were less enthused. We wrote a story together about Bob, a human, who worked at McDonald's until someone threw a grenade in the parking lot. So Bob went to work at Burger King. Then he robbed Taco Bell, and because stories have consequences--he went to jail.

There were also stories about an eraser, about another Bob getting attacked by a shark (lots of stories about Bob), a flower getting mowed down and coming back to life as new flowers, fan fiction about Phineas and Ferb, a pencil ... 

I saw the big boys sit up when I talked about giving the character rewards along the way. One young man said appreciation; another said respect. 

And I watched them all sit up and lean forward when I told them this:

"Here’s the most amazing part--stories can be anything you want them to be. Your story can be authentically you. You are the only one who can and will tell your story the way that you can. It’s all up to you and your imagination. Stories can be made of mostly pictures or mostly words. They can be entirely true, like the Bible, or entirely fictional, or anywhere in between.

A story can be anything you want it to be. You can write about the past or the future. You can go anywhere you want. You can ask the hard questions and find the answers through writing."

And I finished with this warning. "Here’s what we never want to do. Never use stories to lie or deceive people. Stories share truth even in a fun, silly way."

In the end, I don't know which children will grow up to be authors and who won't. But I know that if we were to look into the future, they might surprise us. The ones who wanted to write may do just that, or they may be an accountant, and the boys who seemed disinterested—well, one of them may be the next C.S. Lewis.

My point is we never know who we may touch with our stories. Whose lives we may change. Whose future direction we may alter.

What about you? Have you ever tried to mentor someone? Have you shared your love of something with another person? If you haven't, I would encourage you to give it a go. Find someone who wants to learn about something you're good at, and inspire them to be all that they can be.

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