Storyteller or writer?

It took me nearly nineteen years of trial and error to come to a major realization.  A lot of people witnessed it, even if they had no idea what was actually happening…

Years of attempts of writing a novel, submitting it, getting rejected, and repeating that process again and again—what most artists call paying your dues—taught me something important: I am not, and will never be a literary genius, nor will I ever be considered a good writer, not even marginal.

Well, that sure is stunning news when you’ve set your sails for the great unknown and left everything else behind.  I remember reading once about Napoleon when he was invading a particular island.  He had only so many resources, the most costly of which were the boats to ferry his troops over to this island.  Once he landed his troops, he had the boats burned, then turned to his guys and said: “If you want to get back home, win!”

This is the approach I took, about twenty years ago now, when I felt the call of the written word.  The whole idea felt correct, but there was something important I was missing: I am very, very good at telling stories, not writing!

I had not gone to college and majored in Literature, spent countless hours of reading and study of the classics, breaking them down into elements that I would then hope to later incorporate into my own work, my influences, in other words.  Yet, despite a complete lack of credentials, I none-the-less went headlong into the fray, dashing off gobbledy-gook and putting a title to it.  Somewhere in the mess of bad syntax and jumbled punctuation, a pretty cool story idea rested, buried so deeply under mistakes that few who I submitted to ever even bothered to answer me.  Yet, on occasion, I would get a little note scrawled back to me with, good story idea!  Poorly executed.  This is not for us.

How much of the word ‘no’, can you take? 

Understanding the clear lack of knowledge that was holding me back, literally, I continued to self-teach, or ask those around me for help, for the extra eyes that I had never taken the time to develop.   One rule I fastened on quickly was: in order to write, one must read.  They also said, in several of the books I read about writing, to be sure to read the sorts of things you want to write.  I became a veracious reader, tearing through one work after another, thinking the entire time: I can do this!  

After meeting and then marrying The Fabulous Feathermaye, one of the smartest women on the planet, I immediately bombarded her with questions and made her listen to the ideas as they spilled out, until she finally reached the melt-down point and told me flatly: You need to learn to write if you want to be a writer.  In fact, as much trouble as you have with it, you’re better off taking the storyteller approach. 

“But, I thought I was…”

“Nope, you think you want to be like Larry McMurtry, or Grisham or Conroy.  I know these men have a great deal of influence on you, honey, but they were drawn to literature by the written word, you are drawn to this by the story.”

“What’s the difference?”

“That’s what you need to find out.”

Thus began my new quest, learning how to write well enough to tell a good damn story.  Ah-ha!  Eureka. 

A few months later and The Fabulous Feathermaye was job-posted to the US Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, to be exact.  I would have to go along as extra baggage, a Man-whore (we said joking about it).  There would be no work for me down there, I would have to use this time, this most excellent opportunity, to begin my storytelling career.

As I lived in a postcard setting, I began to tell a story.  It was a pretty good tale, I thought.  I wasn’t the only one either.  Feathermaye liked it a lot and helped me shop it to publishers and agencies.  When positive responses began to come back, she then began to really get into editing my story, turning it into something more vivid, clarifying ideas that I had no clue were even murky.  It opened my eyes to see the changes she made to enhance and enliven that little story. 

Then we got a really cool call…

Feathermaye just happened to be at home when the call came.  The head of a large literary agency got on the phone himself and called to tell us that he was sitting around the discussion table with several of his agents and assistants and they thought that our (by that time and after all her work, how could I not put Feathermaye’s name on the cover!) dark little story was pretty good stuff.  They asked us a lot of questions and then told us that it was down to our dark little tale, or one they were also looking at, that evidently had a lot to do with angels. 

The following Monday his assistant, the one who had brought the book to the table in the first place, called us back and said it was a no-go, they went with the other work instead.  Good luck in the future, especially since you are such good storytellers. 

Lord knows I was nowhere near ready had they said: “We’re taking you straight to the top of the New York Times Best Seller List!”  And, we were only deflated a short time.  After all, it was far better to have someone like that actually pick up a phone and call with an opinion, than to get another of those rejection letters, I had a box full of them by this point in time.

As many of you witnessed, late in 2009 I sat down one day and took out one of my older stories, in fact it was the first novel I ever finished, as bad as it was, it had a cool title that I just loved: “Alligator Farm”.  Sitting right there, in two hour segments every day, I re-wrote that story using a new ‘storytelling technique that I had been working on.  The idea wasn’t a new one, not in the sense that I invented anything.  It just hit me one day as I was messing with a large wad of rope.  The more I fought with it, the more tangled it became until I finally found the beginning end and the tail, which then allowed me to finally unravel it. 

It struck me that my stories were tangled this way, with too many things that may have seemed cool ideas at the time, did not really fit anymore, they did nothing to move the story along.  So, I began to think of the story itself… The beginning, the middle, the end; this is one of the more basic of concepts taught in writing, but it has befuddled better men and woman than me.  Yet, after untangling that rope, it hit me that I needed to do the same with my work!

Alligator Farm, in all its earliest, ugliest states of being, remains in my head like a stain.  I knew every detail of the characters, their lives and the reasons they turned out the way they did.  I loved every element in the story, so I started it over, finding a new end of the string, and forcing the tale to run straight down the line, as if I had added grease to the string and each piece of story was a new bead I was dropping on, each slid nicely into place and once I was done, it stood all by itself. 

People, many of you reading this now, were reading along as I worked on it.  Suddenly, I had an audience, watching, waiting for something new every day.  I kept at it, finished Alligator Farm (which will go to the publisher in ’12) and moved on to Tormenta, which was published recently.  As the ground swell bloomed, Feathermaye cautioned that I needed to quit working full-length stories on the open blog.  So, I’ve stopped that and now only post shorter works, as I continue working with larger projects. 

Fascinating how changing an outlook, and a technique could make such a difference.  So, today when asked, I’ll grudgingly nod when asked if I’m a writer.  But it’s only because that is the medium through which I tell these tales.  Besides, there are lots of great editors out there waiting on storytellers like me.    

The Pulitzer Prize and my name will never collide in the same sentence.  I’m no writer.

I just tell stories.