An Imitation of Other Stories
I have always loved stories.
I’ve spent my life creating stories myself, of course, but even more, I have spent it seeking out others’ stories. Immersing myself in the experiences, the griefs, the triumphs of human beings who never lived except on the page.
I hold the language of stories in my heart. When another writer astounds me with a particular gathering of words, I rejoice. Envy never occurs to me. The field in which I labor is made holy by such artistry.
Stories serve me so profoundly that their impact on my life is beyond naming.
I have turned to story to discover myself on the page and to discover those I never would have known otherwise.
I have turned to stories to find meaning. That’s what story does, after all. It takes the chaos of human life and gives it shape and meaning.
When I was in my twenties and struggling with the faith I had embraced so fiercely in adolescence, I even turned to novels in an attempt to rediscover God!
(The one line I remember from that particular search came from a Saul Bellow novel, I’ve forgotten which one. A character said, “God isn’t sex, but . . .” The statement intrigued and bemused me.)
A while back, though—more than a year ago, well before Covid-19 altered so much in our lives—something changed. I didn’t fall out of love with stories or stop seeking them out. But the stories I found quit serving me.
I picked them up, book after book after book, and began to read . . . and then put them down again. I could see what the authors were doing. Often I could see that they were doing it well.
But I didn’t care.
I didn’t know why I didn’t care. I knew only that I was searching for something and this wasn’t it.
A certain facility with words? A particular character, setting, situation? A voice?
Perhaps more than anything else, a voice.
Whatever it was, it seemed to have vanished from the earth.
I sent out an appeal to my friends, readers all. “Name a novel or a few that you love,” I asked. I didn’t care what audience the novels were intended for, adults or the very young, only that they were loved.
My friends responded.
I received the suggestions gratefully. I took up novel after novel. In each case I could see why that particular book had been recommended. But too often I found myself turning away.
Not one was the unnamed and unnamable thing I sought.
During all this time I began reading nonfiction instead. (What does anyone do with their days who doesn’t read?) And I encountered amazing books, astounding ideas. I even drew three exciting picture book texts from the discoveries I made in my nonfiction reading. First, The Stuff of Stars, followed by two other titles now finding their shape in the hands of editor and artists.
Still, I longed for story. For the story. The one I couldn’t name.
And I began asking myself, “How can I continue to write stories if I can’t read them? How can I write what I no longer love?”
After months of this frustrated search, I discovered my question to be a pertinent one. My own storyteller’s well ran dry, a sad state of affairs for a storyteller/writer.
Recently, though, a starred review caught my eye. It was of The Time of Green Magic by Hilary McKay. I knew McKay’s work only lightly, a single novel read long ago and forgotten. But when I checked her out I saw that someone had said, “She is the best writer we have today.”
So I gave The Time of Green Magic a try.
It hit me like . . . well, like magic.
I’m not sure it was the book, actually. I think it was the moment in my life and the need informing my search. What I fell in love with wasn’t so much the story. It was the authorial voice. Confident. Loving. Wryly funny. Able to embrace sadness, too.
I moved from that to a rereading of Skellig by David Almond, because I remembered responding to that voice long ago. Then to other books by both authors, my excitement building.
Both McKay and Almond are contemporary English writers and both write in a style that is, in equal parts, distinctive and classic.
Both connect me with books I loved when I was a child, which is, no doubt, the magic here. A magic that is peculiarly mine.
Out of that magic, I find myself taking miniscule steps toward another story of my own. Not to attempt to do what they have done. I couldn’t if I wanted to. But their work gives me what I was looking for, an energy that demands its own story.
Fiction has always been an imitation of other stories, not the imitation of life it claims to be. And sometimes, after all these years of making stories, it still takes just the right story to send me on my way.
