Where are you going?

By Christine Thackeray

This week my mother passed away. She was a wonderful mother of twelve, writer and speaker. As my brothers and sisters were talking about the incredible stories she would tell that would keep us entertained for hours, my brother said he had once asked her how she did it. She said that the key to a good story is to know exactly where you are going and how you want your listener to feel when they get there and then designing every element to feed those two goals.

As I consider my work in progress, I was amazed how much this simple gem helped me find clarity. I deleted a couple of scenes and decided to add a few others to better accomplish what I wanted out of the story. But as we live our lives, this could also be a wonderful motto. Many of us think we want to be with our families forever but if we aren't cherishing our time together and instead constantly crave a few minutes alone so we can get done the real things we want to enjoy, perhaps we will still arrive at our destination, but will our feelings be as poignant as they should and could be?

Since then I've decided to delete a few personal plans and add a couple of afternoons of family fun, a few more date nights with my sweet hubby and a couple of temple trips. So that if I ultimately make it to where I want to be, I'll be more thrilled than ever that I'm there.