Telling Stories
I almost titled this post Learning to Write, but decided that was wrong.
I went to English class. I even paid attention, strict grammar be damned.
I wrote a novella once. I wrote essays and research papers. I wrote for a newspaper. I wrote that blog that almost killed me. Writing is communication, and communication is and always has been a huge part of my life.
I love telling stories. When I get my friends a few beers in and tell them about the time I hitch-hiked across Italy or agreed to eat whatever my Taiwanese travel guides put in front of me, I can get a few laughs.
Writing stories is a hell of a lot harder than that, even if it's almost the same thing.
People are lazy. I'm not being mean, it's the truth. You know it. Reading takes a bit of energy, a lot more than listening. How else do you explain podcasts and audible and all that?
Have you listened to the beginning of Modern Romance, Aziz Ansari's masterwork? Go ahead, I'll wait1.
The point is, when you write a story you've got to overcome the reader's inertia. As Steven Pressfield says, Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit.
How then, does an aspiring writer learn to tell stories well enough that people will read them?
How then, indeed.
That's the main thing I'm learning / studying these days, and consequently that's going to be the main thing I post about. There will be other things, too.
If you were too lazy to listen, you sort of proved my point. In any case, the opening chapter of the audio book consists of Aziz mocking the listener for how lazy he or she is to have the book read to them instead of reading it for themselves. It's hilarious :) ↩
