Are you Data or Narrative?/ Bendigo Writers Festival.

I remember once reading that there are two types of ways that people make
meaning of world-data or narrative.
The Festival brought out my love of narrative and stories. It is the stories that stick.
Story 1.
Bob Brown's father was a policeman. Bob would not eat his greens
(Funny because of later political party affiliations)
His father took him to the police lock out and left him for an hour
before marching him back to eat his cold greens.
Story 2:
Bruce Whatley was born with a paralysed arm, strangled in a difficult birth.
His mother was told that it would whither and die but she refused to listen,
massaging it until final at 2 he was able to hold a spoon.
Asking her later, why she was so determined, she said her father
had lost his right arm when jumping on trains to get coal pieces
for a freezing family and his father had lost both arms from passing out drunk
on the train line.
Story 3:
The Goldfields painter, ST Gill did not die drunk on the steps of the GPO in Melbourne
but he did die starving and of a brain haemorrhage.
Story 4:
Horror/Fantasy writer, Keith Austin's father was a Canadian soldier in World War 2 and
instead of being put in a prisoner of war camp, he was interned in a concentration camp.
Returning to England, he became an undertaker and young Keith got used to seeing dead bodies in his front room. Keith admitted to a fear of cotton wool and maybe that is because his Dad may
have used it in his trade.


Everybody has a story and even without the Happy Ever After,
it is so exciting. Writers are generous to share....