Author Posts Happy Story to Inspire Native Kids to Write!

This is a happy start to LIMITLESS HAPPY STORIES from young men and women, boys and girls, whose heritage is traced through the countless nations that lived on this land well before Europeans.  Essentially, I did it – so can you!  Here’s my HAPPY STORY!

Many years ago I began crafting a novel reflective of the Cherokee Nation set during the founding of the United States.  It’s titled, Cherokee Talisman.  In part, I wrote it because I had heard my father speak reverently of the Tuscarora Nation, a people that were once neighbors of the Cherokee and eventually the last tribe to move north and join the Iroquois Confederacy in New York (were my father’s family was from).  The scene is 50 years prior to the infamous ‘Trail of Tears’, and touches on many historical people within the Nation and their roles as they watched a nation form around them and strangle their own.

Within the book, there are the stories of two young boys and their struggles to grow, mature, and prosper during a very difficult time.  As the novel covers a generation, you’ll see that one boy is the son of the other we watched grow up early in the work.  This is important as it shows us that while the struggle may change, the struggle remains.  No one is promising it will go away, because the truth is, it won’t.  And yet, it changes – what was difficult for the father as a young man is not difficult for his son, but new challenges have risen up to take its place.

Let’s fast forward 200 years and look at this under the bright light of 2012 and beyond.  The hard times my father endured, growing up on a poor farm during the height of the Great Depression, were nothing like what I saw as a boy, but the 1960’s and ‘70s were still turbulent and forced new challenges on me.   Still, things are relative to where YOU are – not someone else, in another time and another place.  YOUR challenges are the worst!  No one has it as bad as you!  I thought that way too.  Then my children came along and came of age just as computers and the internet flooded schools.  Now they’ve endured, survived, and flourished.  It’s your turn!  You too will endure, but beyond just enduring, you will THRIVE!  Let’s go back to the novel and see why.

To see the future, look to the past.  Ideas, technology, pressures, and obstacles change as the calendar flips away the years.  But we endure and, as I said, we thrive.  You will too, even though right now it may not feel that way.  My challenge to young men and women, boys and girls, who carry the regal blood of the men and women like those depicted in Cherokee Talisman is to pick up a pen.  Not literally – we don’t do that much anymore.  But close out of the internet for a while.  Instead open MS Word.  See that big blank page?  Fill it.

Not sure where to begin?  Start close to home.  Interview your parents and your grandparents.  What were their childhoods like?  What were their challenges?  Their pressures?  What can they share about being born with regal blood?  A little?  A lot?  Whatever they can give becomes the corner stone of that blank page.

Now research your history, your tribe, your native nation.  What you learn is now the foundation for that page.  Where you go will be based on historical accuracy – FACT – not “Hollywood fact”, but the real deal – not always fun and spectacular, and often harsh and cruel, but the facts just the same.

Ok, the homework part is over.  Let’s shift into high-imagination-gear!  Take what you now know and give your story a name and a face – a name and face of a character or a number of characters.  Be descriptive.  Your readers need to know what they look like, sound like, act like, smell like!  Not just “tall”, how tall?  Taller than this… shorter than that.  Not just “quiet”, “pretty”, “happy”, “sad”, “loud”, “angry”, but ask yourself, “How happy?”  And most importantly for a good story ask yourself, “Why?”  “Why happy?”  “Why sad?”  The ‘why’ is where you take over.  Only YOU can direct your story and your characters.  Your characters will do what you write (trust me on this one).  Use your own experiences to help move them through the story.

Use colors.  “Paint words.”  This gives words an emotion.  It is a trick I use often.  I have a blue angry (so mad on the outside because the character is sad or disappointed on the inside).  I have a purple angry (he or she is hurting – bruised – and strikes out) and there’s the red angry (you can figure that one out!).   Close your eyes and think of the word ‘ANGRY’.  Paint the word blue.  Paint it purple.  Paint it red.  Try a different color.  Feel a change? See how it works?  Now here’s where it gets tougher – take that change and describe it.  Fill in all the blank spaces around that change with words – describing, showing words.

Your readers can read that page of yours, but they can’t read your mind!  Help them out.  Don’t just TELL a story, SHOW a story!

Here’s a very important lesson for young authors.  Try to remember the first time you did ANYTHING.  Tried a cartwheel.  Tried to swim.  Algebra.  Punted a football.  Uploaded to Youtube.  Rode a bike.  Drove a car?  Used a new cellphone.  The list is endless.

It’s ok to admit it – you weren’t very good.  Me either.

After a lot of practice, we got better.  Writing is like that.  You get better.  Words come easier.  Stories jump off the page!  I tell people that writing is like a muscle – the more you work it, the stronger it gets.

So start.  Lay a cornerstone.  Discover your foundation.  Create characters.  Show your readers how & why.

My HAPPY STORY is that I wrote Cherokee Talisman.  I can pick up the book with a sense of satisfaction and pride, not just in having told an entertaining story, but doing it in a way that reflects honestly on native culture so someone else can know the future by knowing the past.

Write your own HAPPY STORY.  Do it for others who don’t know your story, but want to or need to.  The story itself may not always be happy.  That’s ok.  Cherokee Talisman is that way.  But the result becomes its own HAPPY STORY.   Native heritage is special.  It’s so very unique.  Don’t let those stories of yours go untold.  Only YOU can show YOUR stories.  If you don’t do it, it won’t get done.  Pick up your pen!

ABOUT 1 Billion Happy Native Stories

The word “Native” includes people, plants and animals and is synonymous with the following: Indigenous, Aboriginal, original and innate.

Partners of the Heart is a web based and interactive company where people pay a minimum of $1 to share a positive story that will be digitally archived forever. The reason people pay for these stories is because our clients who are non profits receive a minimum of 25% of the $1 story and those funds are filtered directly back into the charitable organization. Charities have had a hard time reaching their audience digitally and this gives them an outlet and an additional way to finance or capitalize their charity.

Go to http://billionnatives.com/ to create your own Happy Native Story!

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David-Michael Harding is a life-long writer whose work has appeared in numerous national publications. His historical short story, “Forever Beneath the Celtic Sea,” which details the sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania, was runner-up in the Southeast Regional Arts Council Awards. His novella, The Cats of Savone was the recipient of an International PEN Award. He holds a master’s degree in education, and currently works as an adjunct professor of writing and resides in Tampa, Florida. Most of his days are spent writing from the cockpit of his sailboat, Pegasus, somewhere off the Nature Coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico.

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