We cannot help but tell stories

Humans have been regaling each other with stories for millennia. And not just as adults filling time or the elderly speaking to be heard. Children do it too, without even thinking. They pick up a stick and pretend it’s a sword. They play house long before they’re old enough to understand mortgages or spring cleaning. Many an innocent cloud has been besmirched by some imaginative individual looking up and saying, “That one looks like a duck.”

It’s in our blood. It’s not something we could stop if we wanted to. And why would we want to?

Stories serves so many purposes it’s impossible to list them all. They help us make sense of the world. They allow us to pass on what we’ve learned: honey is sweet, bees can sting. They connect people across time and place. They remind us that we’re not so different from anyone else, even when we look different on the outside.

And now, by the miracle of modern economics, some people are able to make a living writing stories. To “eat off their words,” as a professor of mine once said.

All it takes is a bit of hard work and a boatload of luck.

Writing is a craft

Despite the fact that we’re born doing it, storytelling is a difficult act. The question of how to do it well is perhaps one of the deepest rabbit holes in all existence. You can spend a lifetime writing and barely scratch the surface of what’s possible. As Ernest Hemingway said:

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

That was Ernest Hemingway, for anyone who missed it. Let that sink in for a moment.

The truth is, there’s so much to learn it can be overwhelming. Just when you grasp plot structure, you realize you also need characters. Just when your worldbuilding is complete, you see how much more you could be doing with theme. Or dialogue. Or action. Or prose…

Writing is not for those who like to finish things, but for those who like to start. It’s a well you dig in hopes of finding water.

But though there are always new tools to acquire and ideas to test, there is also the fact that great writing is a pact you make with your subconscious. You might hold the spade, but the water that rushes up from below comes from somewhere wilder, more unrestrained, more real. This is because…

Writing is an art

Anyone can cobble together a perfectly structured Three Act novel, given a little training. This is the promise of writing books galore, of YouTube channels and MFA degrees. And such tools are incredibly useful because they simplify some of the more complex parts of writing.

But the best novels have something more. A je ne sais quoi, an “it factor” that cannot be explained. They just seem to resonate in a different way.

When you’re reading one of these books, it feels like the author is operating on an entirely separate creative plane, like they’ve discovered a whole new level no one knew existed.

But they didn’t. They managed to use the same tools as the rest of us, the same vocabulary, the same back-breaking work. So what did they do differently?

They found something honest, something true. Like a wildflower in a field, they chanced upon a small growing bud and stopped to give it water and sun, built a fence around it, tended it until it grew. They had a heart attuned to such things, and the wits to know when they’d found it.

If this sounds kind of hokey, that’s because it isn’t rational. It hails from a different part of the self, one we don’t listen to a whole lot anymore. Much of the artist’s work is just learning to get their brain out of the way and let their true heart speak.

It’s all about who we become

Some people use writing as a way to get rich and famous. But that’s just foolish self-loathing.

Why?

Because writers don’t make money, as a rule. The vast majority will make less than a month’s worth of living expenses in their entire career. If you’re going to gamble, at least go to a casino where you can find a beer. Or buy a few lottery tickets. You can purchase one in 20 seconds and have roughly the same chances of success. Don’t spend your precious blood, sweat, and tears on something that’s never going to give back.

But here’s the secret. Writing does give back. Just not usually in money or fame.

It gives you you.

In the bleak early mornings and the exhausted late nights, in the harried lunch breaks where you tap out a few words on your phone, in the endless day-dreams that will never come to be, you find something you didn’t know existed.

Determination. Resolve. An inner reserve of strength, the desire to make something of your life.

And, slowly, you also discover your own gifts and talents. You find your voice, and that alone is worth all the sacrifices.

Like so many things, the value of writing is not in success, but in the struggle. Because that’s where you face your limits and overcome them.

If you want to be rich and famous, you’re in the the wrong profession. But if you want peace and purpose like you’ve never known…

Welcome. I’m glad you’re here.