Stories beside the fire
To write fiction is to embark on a journey into another realm where I throw myself open to whomever and whatever I meet there.
I do not own that world. It is not a dimension only I can visit. I’m a guest with three tasks: live there for a time, be completely honest about the experience, and write it down.
Imagine this: You stand at the door I’m describing. (You may find that you have one, too.) It opens to a vast field that no one owns. There’s something in the nature of this realm that calls your name. Perhaps it has called you all your life, perhaps only recently. It calls you with persistence. Does anyone else hear it? Who knows? You do.
If you’ve ever walked through a door like this, I wonder if you, too, experience it as a kind of insanity. Like any form of madness, perhaps, the writing kind demands total giving and complete absorption. Of course, I seem to be ”free” to come and go. But am I? Once I’ve passed through the door, it demands my return and settles for no less than my all. It is an insistent, nagging urge. And it is never satisfied.
Once it got its hold on me, I was addicted. Don’t open the door without your eyes open.
I’m not talking about a negative thing.
For me, it’s been overwhelmingly positive. I experience writing stories as a fulfillment of something ancient. As I write I often feel that I’m sitting beside our ancestors on the savannah, listening to their stories and telling my own, as we warm ourselves by the fire against the chill of the night. While the stories I tell seem to originate in the isolation of my mind, the act of listening and telling is a social act, a participation in the community.
Storytelling around the fire
From the moment they came down from the trees to venture erect onto the savannah, our ancestors developed consciousness through language and storytelling. And thereby, they said yes to life, evolution, and our ongoingness. And now we see that our story began still earlier in the sun and the galaxies. You and I have the grand privilege to be poised at the tip of an ancient, connected, upward urge called life. Those that came before us answered with a collective “yes” to that urge. We inherit what they gave us. We know in part because of the stories they passed along, stories we pass along in our turn to those who come after. They’ve left us with the awesome possibility and responsibility of keeping it going. What a frightening power and thrilling life!