If you’re on a quest to find your voice, this is a good place to be and if that flame burns strong inside you, let’s see if we can bring it to another level.
I tell stories, a craft as old as humankind, born even before we knew how to lit a fire to warm our words in the chills of night. But I don’t dispense technicalities. There are plenty of books and classes out there to master all kinds of shenanigans: enjoy their menu. I’ll share something different and deeper: the three crucial skills that let me ride this trail. So, let’s start from the first one. The skill of the wolf.
We all live surrounded by clues that can lead to a good story. But I can’t usually see those threads, not at first glance at least. And if I can grasp them straight away, then it’s quite common that they morph, dissolve and grin at my empty hand. And there’s a lesson there.
You don’t need to see those threads. Try to sense them instead. Sense those hints of stories. Stay open to the signals, notice the little twig cracked in the deep of the forest, the faded footprint, the scent of those elusive preys and learn how to hunt them down. Hunting is key, because the darting flashes of our lateral thinking, the ghosts flickering around while stirring in the potion, they require patience, perseverance, stamina and trust. The virtues of the hunter.
A good idea is nothing. Extended, laboured, persistent hunt is everything. And if the catch doesn’t surprise you, good chance your story sucks.
And there lies the first trick of the trade. We never actually know what we’ll end up with and that’s why, in the tribe, we all are hunters. We all are wolfs.
But that’s just the first step. Stroll on and I’ll lead you to another layer.
Since my first assignment as writer, I discovered a special sensitivity embedded in me. I call it the spider’s instinct.
You hunt those story threads, you run around the forest of possibilities, you tag every line, explore the extensions, tie all the loose ends, get back to your camp, pull the whole net tight and… it works. Your spiderweb is there, neat, effective, functional and telling. And not just that. When someone touches your net, an editor, producer, director, you immediately sense the effect on the whole web. Whatever the intervention might be, a precious and refreshing contribution, a constructive critic or a foolish and disastrous blow, you must be completely aware of the effect on the whole fabric.
You need to be a spider for that. Build up your skills to be one. Imagine a famous novel, movie, drama. See it as a spider web and start ripping its threads. Carry on. Disrupt the net in all the different ways you can imagine and feel the changes that emerge, up to their most remote and extreme consequences. Then try to cope with all that. You might even find an incredible new twist to well established stories, a twist no one ever dared to come up with and that can be huge fun. Spider’s fun.
But there’s even another deeper and more daunting level to explore. Stay with me…
There’s a saying in our tribe: “Write what you know.” And there’s another one that sings the opposite tune: “Write what you don’t know.” So what? These warnings are about freshness, consistency, exploration and taking risks but they float on a more superficial level, like the many books and classes I mentioned before. They deal with the content, the craft and product of storytelling more than with the creator. So, I’d rather skip those advises and turn to a more radical one.
Write what you are.
Write from your unique vision of the universe. That will determine the content, the tone, the consistency, the scope much more than anything else, but that has unintended consequences because you need to fully grow up to the real unique vision you have inside.
Search for your life’s gesture. Not your deed, reason, goal, passion but your gesture. I visualize it as the movements of a hand in the air, following a music. I ultimately see the lives of people in an aesthetic way: as a dance. We all have an existential, personal choreography of joy, despair, flat-lined boredom or anything else you can imagine. It’s the tune that inspires all our feats, the epic wave embedded in all humans. It’s the drive that moves us into a functional and fruitful existence or grinds us down into a distorted and painful track to save mommy, assure dad we’re dumb, block emotions to fend off pain, flee our demons. Though demons always catch up…
Search for that gesture of yours. Discover which is the dance that plays the ultimate reason you live for. Then fully own it and celebrate it, even if it’s a desperate fight against your most stubborn shadow, because there’s no other way to be a storyteller but growing into the most sailed, scarred, crashed-and-reborn soul you can. No other way but being a burning phoenix, untangling your dance to its complete consequences to release your full potential to tell something consistent and true.
If you don’t want to be just a clever artisan, a good-enough craftsperson, cherished by a gift turned sterile, then you need to work on yourself. If your soul is not unraveled, deep and meaningful, your stories won’t be either. And there’s no way around it.
Rumi, a Sufi mystic, once said: “Light enters you through the slits of your wounds.” And by those same gates, it shines out to tell who you are through your stories or through any other way of expression you are gifted with.
So, be a persistent hunter, a weaver of emotions, an open wound.
The world needs your vision. Don’t die without letting that out.
MB © 2019