Story telling

Writing this blog is an exercise in fighting self-consciousness. It’s a bit like how I make friends. It takes me a while– and I’m slow to say much to people I don’t know. In fact, I’m overtly cautious, weighing every remark before I say it. But once I know people, that filter apparently disappears (and not always to good effect).  I’m hoping that with time my blogging will be a bit more like talking to a friend, than a stranger.

I was watching David McCullough today on Charlie Rose. He was talking about he  started writing. He says that the key to writing is to just keep at it, because you’ll never learn unless you do. Although that’s very inspiring, I don’t know if I could ever write a book, especially something historic, like he did. I’ve just never had the inclination to go that deeply into any one subject.

However, he did make a good point about what attracts people to his work, and what motivates him to keep writing: character study.  The people make the story.  Popular work typically focuses on characters over events, showing how the characters were shaped by and shape events. When I wrote articles in college,   my favorite pieces were the people-focused ones. Sometimes the people’s stories spoke of a bigger issue; other times, it was just interesting for its own sake.

At present, I don’t do a lot of people-writing in my daily life. So I’m trying to think of ways to get into that mode.. of interviewing, talking to people again, hearing their stories, and communicating it to the wider world. I thought I’d start with interviews and stories of my family. Not to be posted here, necessarily, but mostly for our own records and for my own curiosity.