But I Want to Write About Unicorns!

By Danny Manus

There once was a young child no more than 8 years old – let’s call her Susie – who loved to write. She’d write short stories, poems – whatever came to her. And she was obsessed with Unicorns – like, totally obsessed.

One day her teacher gave the class a homework assignment – to write 1 page about their family. The next day, she presented her paper to the class. Except while everyone else in the class followed the assignment and spoke about their brothers and sisters and parents, and they all got gold stars, little Susie decided to write about unicorns…Because she liked them.

The teacher scorned her, told her that the assignment wasn’t to write about unicorns and while she is free to write about unicorns in her spare time or for fun, when she’s doing her homework she needs to write what everyone else is writing. She needs to complete the assignments given to her. Or else no one will get to hear her stories.

Susie cried and screamed about how she would only write about unicorns no matter what anyone said and no matter what anyone told her she should write about. And poor little Susie ended up with 14 books about unicorns that no one ever read, and sadly had to repeat the 4^th grade.

What’s the lesson here?

Originality is a great thing and the thought of rebelling against the system or Hollwood machine can be intriguing. But if everyone is telling you to stop writing about unicorns because no one wants to hear about them…then maybe you should start paying attention to what everyone else is writing.