Why isn’t everybody writing down their stories?
Stories are an intrinsic part of our societies and culture, but what do we know about them?
Nobody knows when the first story was told but we all suspect it was in a cave by some primitive hunter.
What we do know is that those storytellers who were good at retelling events reached positions of respect and power. They served as a means of communicating news, teaching moral principles and law.
The earliest writing we know of dates back to around 3,000 BC in an area we now know to be southern Iraq. The people in the temple needed to keep records of grain, sheep and the likes, and it became impossible to rely on memory.
Some 5,000 years later nothing has changed. We still use the written word to communicate news, educate and calculate our wealth.
But what of the storytelling - why isn’t everyone writing down their stories?
Think of all the people you have known and are no longer here. What of their stories? Lost forever. A whole generation of people who lived through World War II are dying out, without ever telling us their life experiences.
So why don’t YOU write?
Is it because you don’t have anything to write about? That’s true of nobody.
Are you worried that your writing isn’t good enough to be published? That’s true of a lot of people but they still write and then they get a good editor.
You don’t want to be criticised. But you can’t please all readers all of the time. If you don’t receive any feedback, is that because you just haven’t persuaded them enough?
You think that you need to have attended years of creative writing courses before you can write anything, because some posts say just that. Some people may decide to go down this route but there are plenty of successful writers who haven’t been to a single class. They just sat down one day and started writing and, over time, just got better at it.
There’s never enough time for you to write. Yes writing is time consuming, but writing shouldn’t be seen as a chore. It should be seen as an adventure.
What to do next…
Read, write, talk to me, read, write, talk to me, read, write, talk to me...