Chosen
You think you choose your story. What if it chose you?
Hey, Runners!
I’ve read a lot of books about writing, but if I had to choose just one that changed the way I think about both writing and creativity, it has to be Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. I’ve purchased multiple copies of the book to give to other people, and I have both a very marked up print copy and the audiobook
One of the things I love that Gilbert does is the way she anthropomorphizes concepts. She did it in her big hit, Eat, Pray, Love, and continued to do it in Big Magic. She gives life to fear and loneliness and genius, seeing them all as almost little gnomes or fairies that dance around us, trying to get our attention.
But my favorite anthropomorphization of Gilbert’s is when, in Big Magic, she imagines story as an entity looking for a dance partner.
You are that partner.
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It’s time to dance.
There’s a whole story in Big Magic about how this idea presented itself in Gilbert’s own personal experience; if you don’t have or can’t get the book, you can listen to my discussion of it on this episode of my podcast Big Strong Yes.
Today’s Comments Assignment:
Does imagining your story as a dance partner change the way you think about it? How?
I love this imagining of story ideas as entities of their own, and if we don’t take them up on their invitation, they’ll find someone else. It makes me feel better about ideas I couldn’t pursue because of personal reasons; it’s nice to think that maybe someone else took that great idea and ran with it.
But the big reason I love this idea is because it makes me feel less alone. Seeing my idea as a partner rather than a thing gives me a nice sense of community in my work, even when I don’t have community with me.
And I just think that’s nice.
Every last one of my mss have come to me. In fact, if I try to imagine or rush the story; the characters shut up and stop talking to/engaging with me and I have to stop what I'm doing,(brainstorming, writing), until they decide I've been sufficiently chastised, and now know my proper place. (Glorified secretary. They do the telling, I do the typing.)
M
sometimes it feels less like story is an entity that's a dance partner and more like it's an entity that swarms into my brain and sets up shop there until it's done with me 🤣 (which, to be clear, I'm totally fine with haha)