Essays | Stories & Soliloquies

I’m going to do the unthinkable and quote wikipedia here. Serendipity (along with soliloquy, and hygge) is one of my absolute favorite words, and the description on wikipedia is just lovely:

Serendipity means a “happy accident” or “pleasant surprise”; a fortunate mistake. Specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it. The word has been voted one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.

Serendipity has guided me to my favorite things in life. I have a tendency to put a ton of work into making a decision, and then magically find myself casting it all aside and doing something that feels almost totally accidental. This is how I ended up in graduate school studying philosophy instead of at one of the documentary film programs I’d painstakingly researched. It’s how I found my first AND second apartments by randomly calling a number on a sign by the road instead of choosing from my carefully curated spreadsheet of options. I did a whole bunch of work to find the best option, and then tossed it out the window at the last second to go with this new option that presented itself out of nowhere and was perfect. Serendipity!

I’ve always wished I could be a fiction writer, but it never seemed more than a pipe dream. I had the facility, but I didn’t really have any ideas for plots or characters. Then one day, my husband made an off-hand remark. It was just a little observation, but it was like a light switched on my brain, and I was suddenly filled with a story. I ran with it, and out of nowhere, seemingly by happenstance, I had a first chapter.

It feels serendipitous, suddenly having a story to tell. It feels like I stumbled into the story accidentally, like it’s some fortunate mistake that I’ve come across it, rather than it being something I’ve made up myself. It feels right. It feels good. It’s not something I’ve been working at for my whole life, and yet I have been, indirectly. Over and over again, my work has focused on literary elements, metaphor, myth, imagery, narrative, so perhaps its no happy accident after all.

But maybe there is no happy accident. I like to put the work in, and I like to think that the work was worth it – that it’s cleared my mind and helped me know what I want, so that when I randomly happen to see it, I can recognize it immediately. Perhaps all the time I’ve spent studying historicism and attempting to tell philosophical stories has paid off by preparing my mind to receive a story when it comes along.

I’m reminded of a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on listening to your muses. Even if you’re not a fan of Eat, Pray, Love, you can still be a fan of this talk. She explains beautifully that we make a mistake when we take credit for our own creativity, thinking it is something we’ve built. Gilbert “shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us ‘have’ a genius”. Fabulous musician Carsie Blanton’s commentary on this talk sums it up perfectly:

This is a tremendously comforting concept for me, and I imagine it’s the same for every creative person (and by that I mean every person). It means that my job is not to create. My job is to remain inspired, so that my heart will be open to the creative force.

And then hope for serendipity.

I want to be a writer, and I want to tell stories.

It takes a little arrogance to tell a story. To be a storyteller is to do what philosophers try and fail to do, only on a smaller scale, granting the author objective, omnipotent understanding of how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together irrespective of personal bias and limitation, and according the rules of the universe she creates. To be a storyteller is to be a demigod, creating a universe in which all is knowable to the author, even if it isn’t shared through the characters or even the narrator. To assume that people will want to enter into your world, a world born of your own mind or filtered through it is bold, to say the least, and even to engage in that created world on your own (assuming no prospective readers) feels a bit narcissistic, as if the world inside your mind deserves such attention. Even stories of true things, told or retold, show us as much about the storyteller as they do the story. No matter what the story is, it will come out of an author with residue belonging to the person doing the telling indelibly attached to it. It’s unshakeable.

In his essay on Fairy-Stories, J.R.R. Tolkien explains that no two stories are exactly the same, even if they contain incredibly similar elements. It is impossible to truly copy a story, for though two versions of what seems like the same story may share common roots and even content, the shapes of those stories will be like leaves on the same tree – similar, connected, yet ultimately unique. You can’t help but be original, no matter if you try to or not. The unique filter of you will leave its mark on the stories you tell.

And that terrifies me.

A story you write exposes you – I mean to say, it doesn’t just show your story off to the world, it shows who you are at your core, the subtle inarticulable things that make you unique that can only be shown aesthetically in unquantifiable ways. The turn of phrase. The rules you choose to break. Word choice. Narrative structure. Things which, if you’re any good, remain hidden to an audience even as they can’t help but absorb the unshakeable “you”ness that remains attached.

It’s also a powerful thing, if you’re successful at all. To tell a story is to guide a person’s consciousness to specific experiences and feelings (even if it’s just your own). It’s to command attention away from what is physically happening around us. You can often tell if a story is good or bad by judging how well it pulled you in when you were receptive. You can’t blame a story if you’re a distracted reader, of course, but if it is the story itself that is distracting you, or reminding you that what is in front of you is just a story, then the story has failed.

There are exceptions to this when calling attention to the act of listening or watching or reading is intentionally done – as when actors break the fourth wall, or when artists break convention – but then, in these cases the point is usually larger than the story itself, venturing into the “real” reality and out of the realm of “story” entirely. I think when that happens, the writing or telling is a vehicle for some other kind of communication between authors or artists and their audiences, rather than story telling per se. It’s bold in its own way, and also important, but it isn’t really the focus here.

The goal in story telling is to envelop either the self or some other person into a controlled consciousness. To break this by failing to keep safe the boundaries of the story is to fail outright. It is uncomfortable to experience as an audience member. We want to be swept away. There’s responsibility here that is inescapable. In addition to the arrogance that is required to chase this sort of power, there is also a responsibility to guide your narrative in a way that is gratifying; to tell a story is to say: “I have created this world and it is wonderful – give me your time, and in return I will fill your head with something more worthwhile than what is presently around you.”

With that being said, and with my terror firmly in place, I still want to write stories, to create miniature worlds out of words, and hopefully, pull readers into those worlds and drown out their other thoughts. I hope I can do this, and I hope I can make it worth a reader’s time. And most of all, I hope to be able to write in a way that is respectful of the gift that a reader gives – the gift of present attention – and in a way that shows gratitude for such a gift, and treats it with care.

I have a lot to learn as a writer, but that, at least, is my goal.

Stories & Soliloquies

Category: Essays

Serendipity

Posted at 1:20 pm by michellejoelle, on October 25, 2013

To Tell a Story

Posted at 11:22 pm by michellejoelle, on October 16, 2013

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