Tools of the Trade
Every writer knows the buzz of an idea coming to life, a story beginning to unfold like one of those Japanese paper flowers in a bowl of water. Sometimes the feeling happens at the most inconvenient time, when driving or in the shower—with no pen or paper in sight.
If not written down, it may be lost forever, like a dream—which feels so real in the moments after waking up that forgetting seems impossible. And yet, minutes later
The transmittal (or translation) of an emotional experience into language is as old as human culture. Of course, we’ve only had writing for a few thousand years. Before then, the ancient storytellers of the world, from Greece to Mesopotamia to West Africa, conceived their epic poems orally, to be shared on special days.
Those same, of course—we’re storytellers. The term feels like a nod to our Western obsession with industry or physical mass production—and it fails to connote any of the spiritual or mystical aspects so vital to the storytelling process of our shared ancestors.
