[TheChamp-Sharing]

SHOW NOTES

Quick overview of this week's show:

• My top 5 moments that shaped me as a writer (follow up to Episode 11, so if you missed it, check it out and come back here)

TRANSCRIPT

In this week’s episode I’ll be following up on the Top 10 Moments that Shaped Me as a Writer. I’ll be talking about my Top 5.

***

Hello, and welcome to episode 20 of the podcast! I’m twenty episodes in, and the podcast doesn’t feel new to me anymore. Thanks to everyone that has tuned in so far, and here’s to a bright future to the podcast!

In episode 11, I counted down the first half of the Top 10 Moments that Shaped Me as a Writer. If you haven’t heard that episode, you can find it at michaellaronn.com/episode11.

Anyway, the first round was finding my biological father, taking WMG Workshops with Dean Wesley Smith, reading the works of Swami Vivekananda and Ray Bradbury, and learning how to speak Spanish. Those experiences developed me as a writer in important ways, and if you read my work, their influence on me is obvious.

So let’s jump into my Top 5, shall we?

Top Moments in My Creative Life, #5-4

#5 is writing music. As you guys know, I started my creative career as a musician. I was writing songs in high school, and very active in band. I'd come home from school, do my homework, practice my saxophone, and then I'd write music.

I had a computer program that allowed me to capture my ideas and it would play them back for me. I would try to recreate my favorite songs in this app, and I started with TV themes. I collected TV Themes because they were so fun to play. Because smartphones didn’t exist, I carried around a CD of my favorite TV Themes.

Matlock. The Odd Couple. Knight Rider. Alf. I Love Lucy. Moonlighting. The Cosby Show. The Greatest American Hero. Great music.

Anyway, writing music was important in my development as a writer, and my love of TV Themes brings me to #4, which is my friendship with my friend, Will.

When I was collecting TV Themes and writing music, it turns out he was doing the exact same things as me—learning how to play music and write it. I don’t even remember how we met, but we were in marching band together and we ended up talking about TV Themes and I shared my CD with him.

Thirteen years later, we’re best friends. Music-wise and life-wise, we’re on the same wavelength.

I can remember hours and hours spent at both our houses, writing songs.

Now, I’m a creative, but he’s even more of a creative than me. I remember learning so much watching him play music, explore his guitar and piano as we figured out chord changes. He has an incredible eye and ear, and working with him taught me to sharpen my eyes and ears, too.

Will is musician these days so he stayed on the music route, but we’re still best friends all these years later.

Top Creative Moments in My Life, #3-2

#3 is The Creative Penn by Joanna Penn. I’ll talk more about the circumstances that led to me finding Joanna in my #1 item, but listening to Joanna’s podcast and reading her blogs inspired me to be an indie author. If I hadn’t done that, I would probably be still submitting my work to publishers waiting on them to accept me.

#2 is studying abroad. In college I had the opportunity to study abroad in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama.

I traveled with a student group for 3 weeks, and at the end of that, I broke off from them and stayed behind, traveling by myself to Nicaragua instead.

I have no idea why I decided to stay there on my own. Looking back on it, man was it ballsy.

But man did it teach me a lot about myself.

I was in a foreign country where I barely spoke the language, had no guide or help, and I had to learn how to live by myself in Managua, Nicaragua for two weeks.

I went to many interesting places, ate so much interesting food. But there’s one experience that I will never forget.

I had visited an ATM to get out some cash. I only had one bank card and it had all of my money on it.

I accidentally dropped my wallet while I was putting the cash in it. It took me a while to gather all my belongings.

When I looked up at the ATM, it beeped at me and told me that it had retained my card. I had to go into the bank to claim it.

In the United States that normally wouldn’t be a big deal.

But in a place like Nicaragua banks aren’t always safe. In fact, my host father recommended that I avoid them unless absolutely necessary. After all, guards with machine guns stood outside the front entrances.

I was terrified. I had no money, and no money in foreign country is nothing but trouble.

I could have gone into the bank and explained what happened.

Instead, I knew a place up the road whose clerk would let me use the phone to call my host parents. They would know what to do.

So I started up the road, traffic speeding by me as I’m freaking out.

I pulled out my wallet to get my host parents’ phone number, and what is in my wallet?

My bank card.

Seriously.

My bank card was in my wallet. The same one that the ATM ate.

I know what I saw. The ATM ate the card.

Yet here it was in my wallet.

That incident gave me a lot of faith, and it was definitely a higher power protecting me. I’ll never forget it.

And here we are at my #1 item.

#1 is a near-death experience. In 2012 after a nice dinner with my wife, I fell ill with what I thought was food poisoning. I ended up being in the hospital for a month.

That experience taught me a lot about life, and confirmed that I needed to stop wasting it.

When I got home from the hospital, I became a writer for real.

I talk more about this experience in my book, Be a Writing Machine, but this experience was integral to me becoming a writer, and it’s woven into the fabric of who I am. It’s why I always mention it on podcast interviews.

It was the #1 moment that shaped me as a writer.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.” Carol Burnett

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS WEEK'S EPISODE?

 Let me know!