“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
—Joan Didion, from “Why I Write”
Writers can identify with Didion’s words. We might add that we write to communicate, to entertain, even to debate issues. All stem from the exercise of trying to ascertain what life is all about. To recognize what we want and what we fear, to understand ourselves through what we see and think is to process the nature of our lives.
We perceive ourselves as stars of our own movies. Life happens to us. Each of us is at our own life’s epicenter. Even allowing for love and empathy and the multiple complications of relationships, the only life a person can even attempt to control is their own. We find the crux of life’s meaning in the stories we use to explain the things that happen to us and how they drive us. Through the stories we tell—to friends, therapists, readers, ourselves—we derive the sense of our own existence.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live”
—Joan Didion, in her essay “The White Album” chronicling incidents of her life
It is through stories that we unravel life’s meaning. We figure out how to navigate the trials, the joys, the events. As we do this, we discover who we are.
So,now… “Do You Know Where YOUR Story Is?”
For a writer, this question has several meanings—and answers.
At what stage of writing is your story?
Is it fully written, or do you have two ends and no middle?
Is it under revision?
Is it even begun?
Where is it in the publishing process?
Is it under submission to a publisher?
Is it in an editor’s hands?
Is it published—online, in print, serialized, a book, a play, an investigative article in a national magazine?
Where is it in the world?
selling steadily to a welcoming audience?
remaindered?
or memorialized in the hearts of the people you wanted to reach with what you had to say—even if they are few in number.
These are questions a writer faces with everything they write.
But do you know where your story is?
Is it at a beginning, perhaps a new one, from which you hope to make a fresh start, maybe with a new job or home or partner?
Has a chapter closed and left you unsure as to where it will go next?
Is your story still climbing towards an unknown climax? Or are you enjoying a satisfactory denouement before the final page is turned?
Story is everywhere. Individual stories, community stories, society’s story. It is Story—written, spoken, filmed, or merely whispered into the depths of our darkest hours—that explains and defines who we are. Story offers us foundation and reassurance; it offers hope that we can be and do better; it helps us leave something of value for the next person.
Our job is to make our story the best it can possibly be.