A Storied Life

I just heard this phrase ("a storied life")  in an interview and I thought, "Oh yes, that's it exactly!"--the "it" being why I so love my life with writers.

Every time I meet with writers--whether at a cafe or at writing group or in salon--I get to partake in what makes us human: their stories, my stories, and the web that's spun when one story touches another and another....

We send each other links to stories.  "Check out this magazine!" Day said--and I went straight to Barnes and Nobles and purchased a copy of FLOW.  On the cover, it says, "Some beautiful things are more dazzling when they are still imperfect," Francois de la Rochefoucauld.

I haven't read the magazine yet, but am starting with an article about introverts--since I am one.  An introvert, the author writes, is not necessarily shy; she's someone who likes to have lots of time alone, to take her slow time forming thoughts and shaping stories.  She may love the energy of other people--which I do--but she also loves solitude and may find that she is exhausted after parties, which I am.

I spent the morning with a technician from AT&T who taught me how to watch the recorded programs I'd set the TV to capture before I left for Georgia.  I had recorded every episode of Super Soul Sunday and Masterpiece.

I'm glad I stayed home for his tutorial, because this morning I'm able to watch an interview with Ayana Mathis, author of Twelve Tribes of Hattie, a novel that's gotten rave reviews. I always find it fascinating to hear how books are born.  This young writer (she's 39) took her memoir to class at the Iowa Writer's program and received only lukewarm feedback from her classmates and teacher.  (Pulitzer-Prize winning author, Marilyn Robinson.)  She was devastated when her teacher told her that her characters were "insufficiently complex."

And so she began to try her hand at short stories--and it was those stories that were the foundations of the novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie.

Every writing group is like Being At Home in this "storied life."  Home is the place (geography doesn't matter) where stories break though the surface of things and go to the core of what it means to be a human being.  Along with everyone else in the circle of writers, I find my emotions following the trail created by each person's story, sometimes with tears in my eyes, sometimes laughing out loud, and often feeling that spark that happens when someone puts into words something I vaguely knew but hadn't found the words for.

It's magical, revelatory, and brave--adding our truths to the storied lives of other people.

I met a writer in Atlanta last month and we connected instantly, as writers do. "Writers are people who tell the truth as we know it, at this particular moment," she said.  Even though I may not be quoting her verbatim, I loved visiting with her--and hearing that internal click we feel when we recognize another person as part of our tribe.

Writers may be introverted or shy--but when the conversation door opens between them, the conversation is vivid and intimate and subtle and layered. There are no big pronouncements of Truth--capital T; instead there are quiet bursts of color that emerge much like the colors we used to see while we waited for our Polaroid pictures to develop.

From the first stories I read as a child (every book by Lois Lenski in the library) to the novels and essays and poetry I read today, to the stories born in writing groups, I can't imagine life without the richness of other people's stories.