Where are The Storytellers?
Where are The Storytellers?
I have an author’s website, an author page on my Facebook account, and have Pinterest, Linkedin and Twitter accounts. Every component of my social media platform is set up to point out the fact that I’m an author. Fair enough, the acceptance letter from my publisher carefully highlighted a proviso that I build a solid marketing platform. And I get it. To put my books out there; I need to help the publisher’s distribution efforts by promoting myself as a ‘brand’, and I’m happy to do that.
So, why don’t I get all tingly when I see my name with the ‘author’ or ‘writer’ label attached? It took me a long time to figure this out, but I believe I have. It’s because I know the passion I feel when I’m creating a novel or a short story doesn’t come from being seen as an author or a writer. It comes from the lifelong love I’ve had for stories and storytelling. Semantics? Maybe.
As quoted — apparently by Socrates — ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’ There’s no escaping the therapeutic value of examining and sharing some of our memories. It doesn’t matter if someone traveled the world for fifty years or lived their entire life in the same cottage in the same village, they could not exist without countless experiences, observations, and interactions. Every life provides the fodder for a multitude of intriguing and powerful stories.
This brings up a bigger question. Why aren’t there more storytellers? Everyone has interesting stories, memories and challenges that deep down, they long to share. Telling stories has been a basic outlet for the human need to express since we chased animals with clubs and sharpened sticks just to survive. Stories both fabricated and real have been the centerpiece of community and family interaction, and an important distraction from dangerous and difficult lives for centuries. Stories were coveted and sorely needed, whether recited around the family hearth, or at a church or community hall.
That need to tell stories is still with us, and so is the reality that although very different from the past, life can still be difficult and dangerous. But storytellers nowadays are scarce. I believe that basic need has been powerfully suppressed by the ridiculous notion that storytelling should be left to the professionals. Gradually the printing press and the emergence of ‘popular fiction’ have deprived us of amateur storytellers. We need them back in our lives, and not just the ones hoping to make the New York Times Bestsellers list. We need more people revealing what they’ve experienced through writing long or short stories, through journals, or just spinning yarns. I believe our complicated lives could be sweetened by pulling our heads out of our ‘electronic backsides’ once in a while and engaging in interludes of folksiness.
Well, maybe…just maybe, technology will slowly encourage this. The tidal wave of social media sometimes offers hope in the form of new communities and meeting places. Some are already describing themselves as the ‘cocktail party room’ or ‘community halls’ of the internet, where the contacts we’ve retrieved and gathered from other social media accounts will not be collected like so many business and trading cards, or blatantly ‘sold’ to. Instead, they will be nurtured and developed into stronger relationships. Building these relationships successfully should enable us to reconnect with our real social networks in a deeper way, and to carry our stories with us.
—Michael Croucher
