Before social media created the forum which allowed the hijacking of the word “storyteller” as a synonym for bloggers and marketers it was indeed a prestigious art form.

What I share below is from an excerpt to a dear friend and author, over 8 months ago.

I think I am ready to discuss this as I understand it. We are all storytellers. We live our lives in and through stories. At the lowest level of consciousness this is gossip and at another form it can be “motivational speaking,” although for the intellectually evolved such speaking may not yield many new results. We tell stories when we come home to our significant other ( if we have ... read more »

Tagged art, authors, process of writing, social media, story

I fell  flat on an unfamiliar ground.

The view from an unfamiliar ground tastes like blood in your mouth: you just know it is not supposed to be there.

Ever since I was very young I have had some innate sense as to where to go when things fall apart. I am not sure to what extent it is voluntary knowledge, very much like some wild animal, I know what ‘needs to be done’. Sometimes it involves reaching out to a trusted friend or family member and other times it involves physically working through the unfamiliar territory.

The striking blow this time came as a surprise thought without any ribbons of fear. You are an imposter.

Tagged art, life, process of writing, questions, words

I wrote the following inside a card I am giving to a new kindred friend (the card is sealed so I am recalling to the best of my ability): You know I know things. Also let’s not forget my untamable imagination. And then the dreams, the galaxy of answers and questions. Yet, despite all that, I could have neither dreamt nor imagined nor even consciously wished to have had our paths cross. So much we don’t know.

Of course that was just an extravagant way to begin describing the gratitude I feel for having this individual as part of my life now.  I seldom bring people I consider good friends to my ‘inner circle’ of ... read more »

Tagged art, choices, life, neil gaiman, process of writing, relating

In many ways I am finished.

I printed out my so called “creative clutter,” the Tuesday’s stories categorized under Tuesday’s Torrent and Fluck Tuesdays, and stared at the pages without reading. 160 pages of short narrative fiction. I wrote all of that in one year. That is a lot of Tuesdays. Approximately thirty-eight stories, I believe.

Today I re-read a paragraph from a story that I randomly picked. I couldn’t believe I had written it. This was neither a judgment of it being good nor bad. I was absolutely removed from what I was reading. I literally couldn’t believe I had thought these sentences that all went together and belonged to certain characters who wanted to ... read more »

Tagged art, authors, charles baxter, process of writing, sy safransky, travel, wanderlust, words

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place.”

I read The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham when I was around 11 years old. At that time my family was still in a remote desert town in the Middle East, a city that didn’t  have any libraries and definitely no stores with any English books. I read it upon my father’s suggestion from his diverse collection of books. I told him the print was too tiny and it had all these words that I could not possibly understand and I did not want to look them up! He ... read more »

Tagged art, authors, books, process of writing, W. Somerset Maugham, words