My Magician

My Magician(Len Daniels) My Magician
“O.K. Lil, here’s the scoop. I said I would help you write something for your journal and that’s why I’m here. You just have to put your mind to it and let it flow out of you.”
“I know that’s what you’ve told me so many times before when I mentioned wanting to write. It’s just that I don’t know where to start.”
“Let me say this. From my experience, I’ve noticed that the starting point is the hardest part. Here, let me show you……”
I sat down next to my kid sister on the sofa and opened my loose leaf with the stories I’ve written for my writing class, and looked for a good subject.
“Here Lil, here’s one I wrote years ago about a baseball bat. Not just any baseball bat, mind you, but the very bat that the mighty Babe Ruth used in his career in the Major Leagues.”
“Wait….wait, Joey, who’s Babe Ruth?”
“And what’s the Major Leagues?”
I looked at my seven-year-old sister with a frown and asked, “You mean you’ve never heard of Babe Ruth? Why he was one of the greatest ball players in the game in its early days. He hit more…….wait, let’s not get into that. Let’s get back to your endeavors as a writer.”
“But Joey, I’ve tried to think up something to write about, but I just can’t come up with anything.”
“Have you tried to sit somewhere like in your room at your desk with some nice classical music in the background, and just let your mind wander. That’s the way I find things to write about,” I chided.
“Take that story about Babe Ruth’s baseball bat. I think what brought that to my mind was that I read a story on the internet about the bat being auctioned off somewhere and someone paid a lot of money for it as a collectors item.”
“Now, lets see what interests you in your life?”
“Well, there’s Lucy, my favorite doll and Chester the dog I sleep with and…
“Hold it, Lily. I mean things that you see or do in school or at your activity center classes.”
“Well, there’s movies and videos and scrap book making and what I like most is story-time where our teacher reads to us.”
“When you listen to your teacher, do you try to think about who the story is about and what they look like? How about where the story takes you, like in a fantasy place?”
“OH YES! She read a story about this princess who was captured by some mean old man who turned out to be a magician who could make things happen like turning water into soda and tree branches into fudge and….”
“See, that’s how it’s done. You just let your imagination run wild and go with it. Now you try. I’ll be here to help, but not give you the story. You do that.”
“O.K,” a little voice came back with disdain. “Just give me the first word .”
“All right, lets try ‘MAGICIAN.’”
My little sister started writing and I tuned in the local classical music station on the radio next to her desk. I grabbed my electronic tablet and looked up some story posting sites to see if I could broaden her interests so that all her writing wouldn’t be reminiscent of her school days.
I myself found fantasy to be the most interesting subject, because there is no limit to its creative process. Anything you can think of, you can write about and no one can dispute it.
After several minutes in which she looked as though she had ascended into another realm, hopefully, of fantasy, she said, “O.K. Joey, here’s what I wrote. Tell me if you like it?”
“I’m calling it, “My Brother Joey” by Lily Cares.” That’s not my real name. I thought it sounded nice, so I used it.
“Anyway”………..
“I have a magician in my family. He’s not the regular kind of magician like pulling a rabbit out of a hat or cutting a girl in two in a box, but a different kind of magician. He’s the kind that makes bad things go away when they come into my bedroom at night. He’s the kind that can make a rainy day sunny, even if there are still clouds in the sky. He’s the kind of magician that I want to be with for the rest of my life, so maybe I’ll just marry him when I get older.
The End”