Stories have always been a primal form of communication. They are timeless links to ancient traditions, legends, archetypes, myths, and symbols. They connect us to a larger self and universal truths.
Stories are about collaboration and connection. They transcend generations, they engage us through emotions, and they connect us to others. Through stories we share passions, sadness, hardships and joys. We share meaning and purpose. Stories are the common ground that allows people to communicate, overcoming our defences and our differences. Stories allow us to understand ourselves better and to find our commonality with others.
Stories are how we think. They are how we make meaning of life. Call them schemas, scripts, cognitive maps, mental models, metaphors, or narratives. Stories are how we explain how things work, how we make decisions, how we justify our decisions, how we persuade others, how we understand our place in the world, create our identities, and define and teach social values.
Stories provide order. Humans seek certainty and narrative structure is familiar, predictable, and comforting. Within the context of the story arc we can withstand intense emotions because we know that resolution follows the conflict. We can experience with a safety net.
Stories are how we are wired. Stores take place in the imagination. To the human brain, imagined experiences are processed the same as real experiences. Stories create genuine emotions, presence (the sense of being somewhere), and behavioural responses.
Stories are the pathway to engaging our right brain and triggering our imagination. By engaging our imagination, we become participants in the narrative. We can step out of our own shoes, see differently, and increase our empathy for others. Through imagination, we tap into creativity that is the foundation of innovation, self-discovery and change.
From: The Psychological Power of Storytelling by Pamela Rutledge, Ph.D.
#YES YES YES YES THIS IS HOW GOOD BOOKS SHOULD LOOK #i understand it when people hate cracked spines #but anybody that says a battered and falling apart book is sad #and thinks that’s not how you love a book #is talking shit #i love books and they look good like this #they are meant to be read and passed around and get crushed in bags because you can’t leave the house without them #you’re meant to dog ear the pages you love and underline in pencil and stick in stickynotes #if you want pristine you should buy an e-reader #because this is how you experience a book
If you read one book a week, starting at the age of 5, and live to be 80, you will have read a grand total of 3,900 books, a little over one-tenth of 1 percent of the books currently in print.
The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop (via planestrainsnpages)
I have this edition! :D It looks just as torn-up. And it’s perfect.
I love books that look well-read, with pages dog-eared to show how much you love them, spines breaking so that the book falls open to where you pried it open extra-hard. I love books with stains from food you remember spilling, when it was too good to put down. I love books with torn covers from being stuffed into purses and knapsacks and pockets, ripped by other books and pens and simple use.
Years ago, I wanted to get my photography to publishers and galleries, but I wasn’t sure I was up to all the rejection. So I played a little mental trick on myself. Instead of making it my goal to get published or shown, I made it my goal to collect as many rejection notices as possible. When the notices started coming, I had a special file for them. I started looking forward to them! It showed that I was at least doing something.
I Googled “How to make yourself do stuff,” and this smile-inducing story was part of a comment on the first result. (via psychetimelapse)
#life goal #change #failure #failure is awesome because it means you tried #failure is so much better than the alternative of not trying at all
“Michael, you home?” I called, searching through the bathroom drawers. No clean towels. I sighed and tried to wring water from my hair as I went to the hallway closet and dug a musty towel from the hamper. “No laundry done? It was your turn, you know!” I frowned; the dirty towel lumped in my hands and smelled like ancient socks. The lack of fresh clothes and towels forced me to do laundry myself, even though it wasn't my turn. “This is getting ridiculous . . .”
When no answer came, I shrugged and disappeared to my bedroom to towel down. I changed out from my sopping jeans and parka and pulled on some sweats and an old, heather-knit jumper. No bother getting dressed in nice clothes if I'd only wallow on the couch for the remainder of the day. I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to coax it back to life, then dumped the soiled clothes into the tub and walked toward the living room.
The couch and the tv remote called to me.
“Where have you been?” I fumbled with the remote and turned on the couch to see Michael sitting at the corner desk, fiddling with the desktop computer. He seemed to be scrolling through posts on Tumblr . . . Wait.
Was that my blog?
“Missed the bus,” I said, disgruntled. He had a nasty habit of sneaking up on me when I least expected. “I had to walk home from work today. Is that . . . is that my Tumblr you're on?”
Michael scrolled some more, taking in last nights' half-agonized posts of confession. “Rather fascinating, what you reblog on here. You realize it's pointless therapy, right? Quit fighting who you are.” He clicked out of the blog, snorting, and spun around in his chair to stare at him. “You're wet. If you'd respond to my texts, maybe we could have worked something out. You'll catch a cold, now, and I surely won't be able to care for you.” His eyes snared my gaze like briers and held me. “Dreadful amount o work next week. Over thirty hours.” Uncrossing his legs, he leaned forward and flicked his hand at me. It would have been more dramatic if his long, ragged black sleeve hadn't flopped over his fingers like rabbit ears.
“I'm not sick, Michael,” I said, gripping the remote so tightly the DVD player turned on. “Would you quit the drama?”
His eyes laughed at me. “At least go take some Vitamin C supplements. You don't seem to understand what personal risk I'm at. Your sickness would offend me.”
Anger spread like fire across my skin, and I dropped the remote as if burned by it. What the hell was he trying to tell me? “Well,” I said unevenly, trying to keep my ground but failing. His words twisted my gut like a bad drink. “Thank you so much for caring, Michael.” I shoved myself from the couch and walked into the kitchen, failing to stop my fingers from shaking. He always knew which buttons to press.
He always fucking knew.
I pulled down a mug from the cupboards and fished out the makings of a good cuppa. After a while, my fingers stopped shaking, and despite myself, I took two vitamin C tablets. The last thing I needed to do was give him more ammo to fire at me.
He'd already hit home anyway, I thought as I dropped a bag of green tea into my mug and went about filling the kettle. Tumblr was my therapy. People there genuinely seemed to care about me, or at the very least, they encouraged me to continue fighting life's complimentary, all-paid, expense-free deliveries of lemon drops. The fact that Michael – Michael, of all people! – thought my blog was a waste of time?
It stung more than I cared to admit. And I was sure he knew it, too.
“Oh, lighten up, Thor,” Michael said, appearing in the kitchen door frame. I shut off the faucet and turned to stare at him, holding the dripping kettle protectively against my stomach. “You know I'm right. Why would I lie to you?” He sighed, stuffing his hands into the back pockets of his skinny jeans. “I'm only trying to protect you from further disappointment. If that isn't care, well . . . what is?”
“Encouragement?” I said flatly. “Try that sometime. Maybe look it up in the dictionary? It'd do wonders.”
“I do encourage you.” He rolled forward on his toes and studied me, black bangs brushing against his sharp nose. “I just refuse to lie. I like who you are, Thor, unlike all the others. They want you to change. I appreciate the real you. Plus, if you think about it, I'm real . . . and the only reality you have. Why are you so ungrateful?”
“Ungrateful!” I sputtered, water sploshing out the kettle spout in my shock. “Ungrateful? What--!?”
He looked at me, really looked, and I trailed off. My anger died as quickly as it had birthed. Open concern, a rare sight, tugged at my heartstrings. I lowered my eyes, ashamed. Maybe he was right. Though his words pained me, he was the only friend who stuck around. Everyone else had left me, belittled me, or disowned me.
He was all I had.
“I'm sorry,” I said finally, defeated. “You're right, of course. I shouldn't have gotten upset.”
Michael beamed, the ghostly concern vanishing behind the veils of his thoughts, and walked over to gently pry the kettle from my hands. He set it on the stove and turned the knob. “I'm right only because I care, Thor,” he said, then squeezed my shoulder and left the kitchen to find his guitar.
Later that night, I deleted my Tumblr. There was really no point in filling myself with false hope.
This post is the first of many weekly posts that you can find at my co-created blog, Eclectic Scribbles. I'll put links to these posts here on Pens & Inkwells. :)
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I have found, oftentimes, that it is very easy to fall into a rut when writing. You find your groove, something that works, and you stick with it. Say, for example, you write a fantasy book about a medieval-set place where a girl finds out she's a princess/or finds out that she has magic/or finds out that she's the key to some bigger event that she never even knew about. You love this book and enjoy the world building so much that, when the time comes for the book to wrap up, you either start a sequel to write more in that world or start a new book that has the same feeling and style to it.
Guilty as charged.
Fantasy is my safety zone. I'm comfortable working in the realms of magic and medieval things because I know how to do it. Several plots and series have come out of the same melting pot, and oftentimes I feel I wouldn't be able to try something different if I wanted to. This is okay, but it has the potential to hold you back.
A great writer can write thriller/horror/romance/fantasy/and mainstream without needing one genre to fall back on or use as a crutch when the tough gets going. Of course, you always have your favorite genre, but you should be able to work on other things too, just in case one genre or style doesn't work out for you.
It's hard. I should know. I've tried historical fiction (failed at that about 7k in), I've tried religious suspense (finished the book but won't ever do anything with it, it was that bad). I've tried romance (not great at romance, tbh), and I've tried sci-fi (fun, but involves a lot of world-building and logic, neither of which I'm good at). Fantasy has always been my net, catching me when I fail and keeping me from thinking I'm a terrible writer all together. I'm good at fantasy. I can pull it off. I have great plots, great characters, magic, subplots of romance, and fascinating villains.
But I'm not growing. There is no challenge with fantasy. The biggest challenge is editing my own work (it's hard to cut up my own darlings and think up new material; I often heavily rely on what I have to edit, going line by line. Faced with new material and I crumble).
Because I've grown tired of not being challenged, my brain decided to think up of a fairly radical plot line. I've been toying with it for a while, unsure if I can handle it... Why? It's mainstream fiction. General fiction. Character driven set in current times. No magic, no forests, no ancient curses or prophecies. Just a character suffering from mental trauma and a friendship that transcends/challenges what society thinks of relationships today. I've never done this before, and I'm still not sure how I'll pull it off. I'd be writing material that some people might question, sneer at, or shrug off. The biggest challenge is that I need to write it anyway and not let what other people think about it bother me.
So. I want to challenge you today to step outside your comfort zone and write what you think needs to be said. Sometimes writing should be safe and fun, but other times writing should be used as a way to challenge society and bring to light different views and opinions. Writing is a weapon just as much as it is an enjoyment. The pen is mightier than the sword, after all. It is your sword, and you should use it even if you think there's a chance people might laugh at you.
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