Using Your Heroes

More Hero Workshop practical advice from someone else’s blog.  I found this piece of creative writing (I only realized it was fiction after I’d read the whole thing) and had to share.  I’ve put the bit that hit on the Hero Workshop philosophy below.

On my first day in the new school I arrived home crying after a day of vicious taunting by the other children. It was a new experience for both of us and my father seemed at a loss for what to do, but comforted me. I asked him what to do and he said, “Son, I do not know. But in the morning we shall speak again and perhaps we will know more.”

My father was not a highly educated man but he loved to read. He also listened. Not in that manner where the person can’t wait to get their next word in but in a patient manner. He listened to you like he had something to learn from you and that what you had to say might be important.

That night my father did not sleep. He sat at table with a pencil in hand, writing. He had a shelf of his favourite books completely clear; all of them open on the table. Each of his favourite books had characters he admired and, as I was growing up, he would make up stories for me that contained them, giving them life outside the covers. When I would ask him to read me the books he would refuse.

“Those stories you read yourself. You have plenty of time.”

I believe he went through them all, looking for his most admired character’s best, most fundamental characteristics and distilling that down to something for me.