Stealing From One Storyline to Tell Another Story

Steal From Yourself challenge - Prompt: Return to something you wrote years ago and use one idea, image, character, or line from it to create something entirely new.

It's time to dig through your old writing and steal something.

Find a story you abandoned, a poem you haven't read in years, a half-finished draft, or something your younger self was very proud of. Somewhere in there is a line, character, image, idea, or tiny detail worth taking.

For this challenge, take that one thing and give it another life. Drop an old character into a completely different story. Turn a forgotten line into a poem. Take the best idea from your worst draft and finally do something with it.

Don't rewrite the old piece. Rob it. Then use what you stole to make something entirely new.

Vocal Media

Stories were told constantly when I was growing up. I was read books, and told stories. Some books had more rules than others. Like, "I'm only reading you two books before bed as we are all tired." Then there was, "Okay, you can pick four books tonight."

It was usually just one story that was told. Sometimes with a book at bedtime and then at any other times during the day. Some stories had special rules. Like one was Nanaboozhoo stories are only told with snow on the ground. Some families the stories had to be told only at night with snow on the ground.

As kids we picked a lot of berries and mom would tell us stories then too. We never knew what stories she would tell. Sometimes it was family stories. Where lessons would be learned and other times it was animal stories or nature stories.

My mother was like a weatherperson; she would predict the weather better than the weatherman on television. I think they have gotten better but I don't think they knew the weather like my mother. It was always fascinating to hear her predictions.

One time we were setting up for her 70th birthday party and it was supposed to storm and the clouds looked like it would for sure. We were at the lake and Mom wanted us to set chairs up closer to the water, and when I told her it was predicted to storm, she said that the storm was going to miss us.

The storm did miss us. It sure looked like it would hit. but not there on that day. My mother had a lot of information from our Native American culture. Much that we were never told, or if we were, I don't remember it. And then there were some things that I will never forget.

A few of my favorite stories that I learned from others were the story of the eagle, a vulture story, adapted from Sid Simon, and a bear story I'm not sure who told me.

The Eagle Story - The eagle flys through the center of the storm to get to the other side, while other birds try to fly around. In that process they will get beat up and some will die.

My interpretation: It is best to walk through tough times, like trauma, grief and loss, then to try to avoid it by using drugs and alcohol, and other forms of escape.

Sid Simons Vulture Story - When we are small we don't have any vulture food, but as we grow and kids start to tease us, "You are too fat, too skinny, ugly, dumb, whatever," those things are all vulture food. As times go by that vulture is flying really close to the top of our head.

Then as adults we don't need anyone else to tell us what is wrong with us as we tell ourselves. Pretty soon that vulture is bopping us on the top of our head. It is important for us to say stop, as we tell ourselves those things! And then we reach up and say pluck you vulture as we pull a feather!

The Bear Story - The critters were getting tired of how crabby the bear would be in the fall after filling up on berries. He would go into his cave and come out in the morning as crabby as he went in.

They got together while he was sleeping and decided to cover the den's opening, so that the bear may sleep longer. He did just that and slept until spring and woke up all rested and easy to be around.

Moral of the bear story: If we are walking around all crabby, maybe we need to get more sleep, and it may mean it is nap time!