When I first boldly declared that I was a writer, family members and friends clamored to tell me their life stories. I always smiled and nodded with what I hoped appeared to be genuine interest as they revealed to me the great journeys of their lives. Often, their stories were indeed interesting, but I had a story in mind to write about already and quickly tired of hearing about theirs. "You ought to write it yourself," I began telling them, and some of them did enthusiastically undertake the challenge. Then they wanted me to read about their fascinating, utterly absorbing lives, and what could I do but oblige and encourage them? Naturally after a while I began to cringe inside at the mention of yet another gripping personal life story. Perhaps you can relate.
Joseph Campbell recognized a pattern universal to all stories, which he referred to as the hero's journey. Even those of us who don't write can see that we are all characters in our own lives. Life honestly is stranger than fiction. At some point, we begin to stand apart from our experiences and marvel at them for their sheer creativity, for their utter surprise and revelation, their drama and heartache, their adventure and joy. My God! we think. This is incredible. Someone should see this!
This is why as writers we recognize that every life actually is remarkable and worthy of being written down. We know, as my good friend Susan Woodring has so eloquently said before that "[i]nside every character, even the most ordinary — boring, even — there exists the exquisite, the invaluable, the suffocation of normalcy, the brilliant and the ugly — the something that longs to be expressed."
Writers too then, lest we forget, are characters, heroes of our own journeys. Consider Campbell's first stage of the hero's journey, the "call to adventure," whereby we are plucked up from the ordinary world and given the mantle to do this thing which we feel so ill-equipped to do. Some of us may refuse to answer the call, but sooner or later, it is thrust upon us again and we are forced now to submit to what we begin to see as our duty, our great commission.
Who will deny that we really do meet "guides" along the way, that the universe offers up to us what we need if we will but open our eyes and see what is there before us? Look around right now and you will meet your mentor, the evolved hero come to assist you.
On it goes with "trials and temptations," "the magic flight," until at last we become the master of two worlds. The ordinary world where we continue to struggle with the novel, the family, the day job. And the extraordinary world where we stand back and look at the mystery suspending it all in time and space and think, My God! Take a look at this, would you?
Nothing happens to us in the ordinary world that does not also figure prominently in the extraordinary world of our writing lives. Parents age and pass on. Marriages grow stale and sometimes bitter. Kids disappoint and abandon us. But there are births as well as deaths. Meetings with strangers. Close calls. Forgiveness. Be glad you're a writer on whom nothing is lost. Your steps are ordered. Keep walking.
2 comments:
I felt exactly this way--a mentor jumped out at me--a million years ago, when I was driving down the road and somebody on the radio was talking about Bret Lott. Of course, he's not really my mentor in that I have never actually met the man, but reading his book Jewel was the beginning of everything for me.
Great post; I never thought about the call to write being the hero's journey, but it really is.
(Btw, I'm so flattered you quoted me!!)
Yes, it's exactly this sort of thing I'm talking about, Susan. The universe seems to speak to you, nudging you this way or that, and suddenly there's Bret Lott and the whole world shifts.
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