VALENTINE'S DAY .99 SALE:
~Meet Sue Kowalski, a
Kansas City suburb homicide detective. Recently divorced, Sue holds her own in
the all-male force. As the smallest, most agile, Sue has been been hefted up,
lowered down, and scrunched into places no woman should enter. She craves good
bear-claw pastry, coffee, and Jose Morales, a co-worker. Her chances for the
first two are good.
Writers don't talk much about
storytelling these days, so I may as well. :) Instead, writers speak
more about promotion and sales, not stories. Story crafting can be
taught, but a real storyteller just happens. They are born with the
ability to use or not use, as life chooses or they choose.
Please don't think that I am putting
down the art of story crafting. I am not. I was first purchased for
the stories in me, and then taught story crafting by the purchasing
editor. We went through my first book one chapter at a time. Ah, the
good old days when editors didn't have as much of the business size
of publishing and worked more with their writers. Editors do not have
that time now.
A real storyteller cannot be
manufactured. But through story-crafting, a natural storyteller can
be shaped and fine-tuned and packaged into a real find. Repeat:
Either that "spark" is there. Or it isn't.
Having said that, not all storytellers
are equal. Some have more ability than others, like a glass half full
or really full. And there are writers who are truly "full of
it", talent-wise.
When a Montana rancher's dog starts mind-communicating with him, he's in trouble. But she's more trouble, a cupid-tossing female invading his life.
***
You've heard natural storytellers
verbally enchant. Some storytellers can spin stories verbally or on
paper. But they cannot be manufactured.
I believe that everyone has a story to
tell. But it might not be the story they WANT to tell. They may want
to write block busters, but they create best in short form. (BTW,
short form is extremely difficult when done well and should be highly
recognized/appreciated as a real art form.)
I believe it's best for the individual
storyteller to test every nitche possible. Not only to go where they
have sales success, but to stretch and see if there is more. And if
that writer is a genuine storyteller, there will be plenty of "more"
because the stories never stop churning--one story leads to another
and another.
A real storyteller can look at
anything--a windmill, a ribbon, a gun--and rummage up some story
about it. The more they push, the more the stories roll, and then the
trouble begins of sorting through just how many stories, or books can
one writer create in one lifetime.
But a real storyteller either is, or
isn't, whatever the form that emerges and wraps around the
individual.
Storyteller Road Blocks: Time/Energy
devoted to Promotion; Publishers wanting the same old again and
keeping in a trough; Life, of course. Money can block a storyteller,
going where the money is, rather than where natural storytelling
takes the writer. That last one, ye olde $, can run a storyteller
exhausted and dry.
Writing to please one's self, following
that muse-trail, is maximum important. A real storyteller--in this
case, a writer--is going to write no matter the sales or the darkness
in life. In fact, writing stories can temporarily aleviate life's
darkness.
As a summation, I believe if a writer
is a true storyteller writer, that indivual will continue writing, no
matter what. Let's talk more about storytelling? Input, anyone?
