The Power of Story
You've probably read a story that was both entertaining and insightful. Maybe it was the classic Christian story, "Footsteps," perhaps Aesop's fable "The Tortoise and the Hare," or my childhood favorite, "The Little Engine that Could." When you discover stories that connect with you personally, you hold them and their lessons in your heart for your entire lives.
For centuries, spiritual sages have told short stories to enlighten and inspire others, and counting the stories that Jesus and the Buddhas have told might take a lifetime. In fact, it would probably take several lifetimes to fully integrate the wisdom within those stories. And the reason people continue to tell, and love, short stories is because stories are the most effective way to communicate incredibly powerful ideas.
Plato understood this in 388 BC when he asked the City Fathers to ban storytellers, and today's spiritual leaders like Dan Millman, Eckhart Tolle, and Paulo Coelho, also understand this power and continue the storytelling tradition.
Stories are powerful because they are the way you naturally think.
Whether you're consciously aware of this or not, you intuitively think in narrative structures. This could be talking about your day, connecting with a friend, or reflecting on your experiences. In fact, a month-long study of the language patterns of an infant discovered that before going to bed, the infant's seemingly irrelevant babbling revealed a powerful secret:
Even before the infant could speak, her language patterns showed that she was babbling about what she had done that day and was even planning what she was going to do the following day! Now take a moment to imagine that in your own life – Like that infant, you intuitively understood your daily experiences as stories before you knew the words to communicate them to others.
As you can see, stories imprint themselves into our brains naturally from your earliest years. Stories are how you understand best, so when you write stories you directly access the deepest parts of your psyche and soul. You can reach inside and pull out the subconscious imprints that are most valuable to your personal development, and then put them on paper for your conscious mind to see and work with. This process of bringing your subconscious into the conscious can result in rapid and significant personal transformation.
But the truth is:
Unfortunately, most people never try writing stories because they don't think they're good enough. It's a classic paradox because without trying they'll never feel good enough. Having fears about writing is normal for most authors, and it is rare to come across a writer without them. My own fears were only overcome by actually writing – by "being" a writer.
The thing about writing is that none of us are writers until we are writing. "Who" and "what" we are changes from moment to moment. We may identify with what we do in life; for example we may call ourselves computer engineers, energy healers, writers, teachers, or the many other labels we give ourselves based on what we do.
But we can only associate with that label while we are doing the associated action!
Think about that for a moment. While driving a car, are you a writer? No. You're a driver. Understanding this distinction is imperative to overcoming a new writer's most basic objection: "I'm not a writer! I've never even written a story!"
And you're right.
Until you're writing, you're not a writer. So the first piece of advice I offer is to ignore any fear and just start writing because every single fear you might have about writing is based on your belief that somebody will judge you.
Read that sentence again. Maybe read it several times. Afterwards, challenge yourself to find a single fear you have about writing that does not distill down to the fear of judgment.
Also realize that one simple perspective shift eliminates that fear instantly. You see, not all stories are meant to be read. Sometimes writing a story is like a journal and you might write it as your own internal monologue to help you work through issues you're having or to explore topics you're curious about.
"Write for the pleasure of writing. As the pen traces out words on the paper, your anguish disappears and your happiness remains. For this to happen, it is necessary to have the courage to look deep inside yourself." – Paulo Coelho
As long as you write first and foremost for yourself, every single fear disappears instantly. Understanding the more personal elements of writing enables us to get past fears you might have about being a "good" or "bad" writer. Only after the story is written does the question arise, "Do I want to share this?"
"Sometimes the story finds the storyteller. Not the other way around."
– T.L. Pearson, from the movie Neverwas
The other biggest reason why people never write stories is because they say they're "not interested" or because it "isn't for me." I know that all too well because I never intended to write stories either. I had absolutely no interest in it; but what I discovered over time is that there were stories within me that wanted to be told.
I had experiences that my heart wanted to share with the world, but because I wasn't "interested" and because I didn't identify with the label of being a "writer," I dismissed those heart's wishes. In fact, it wasn't until I came into direct contact with another "accidental story writer" that I even became aware that my heart had stories it wanted to share.
Without any prior knowledge of story structure or writing, I stumbled through this process of converting my heart's wishes into words on paper. I fumbled with my own writing, and I battled with my doubts and fears until I finally accepted that there was a storyteller inside me who I never knew. It took me several months of writing stories before I also realized how much this process of writing stories was transforming me into the very person I wanted to be.
What I discovered is that writing stories is an expression of our holistic selves connecting both with our selves and sometimes others. It allows those of us who have never considered ourselves to be "story writers" to find great enjoyment and meaning in writing our own stories.
One of the assuring aspects of writing stories is that it's a guaranteed winning situation. In the worst case, you gain some experience and throw away a story as most authors do hundreds or thousands of times. The best case is that you write a famous story that impacts the lives of millions of people. Usually you will write a story somewhere in between: one that impacts yourself in a meaningful way and also touches the people who are close to you.
If you quiet your mind and listen to your heart for a moment, you'll probably notice that there is a hero inside of you asking to be scribed into your life.