Introducing: Narrative Generosity

"I think of the oral tradition of Greek epics and Homer, as well as the advent of Greek theatre."I always wanted to be a writer. I was sure of this even before I knew exactly what that meant. I felt, even as a child, an urge to tell stories, to create situations in which I could imagine and share worlds around me, to get to the very heart of what people thought and felt. Before I was even writing complete paragraphs, I was creating detailed backstories and motivations for each of my friends’ “characters” as we played house on the playground.You may laugh, but I think this primal urge I felt within myself was just that: primal. I think of the oral tradition of Greek epics and Homer, as well as the advent of Greek theatre. Or the earliest known written language, Cuneiform, used in ancient Mesopotamia to record, among other things, religious beliefs and stories. I think of the Paleolithic cave paintings dating back some 64,000 years. Though not fully understood, these images depicted something of great importance to their creators.It seems if we reach back to the earliest points of human civilization, people needed to tell stories. People need to share of themselves and their ideas in a myriad of ways. We’ve been constantly inventing and reinventing ways of doing just that ever since. As we have evolved, so has our capacity to share our stories. As writers, we use our various media to tell a variety of stories in a variety of ways. It seems we understand that we need stories. To tell them and to share them.

... the act of sharing any story is an act of generosity, a lamp in the darkness as we search for meaning in this life. We are all light-bearers.

Now, we write alone and, at the end of the day, I think most of us write for ourselves, for that burning need to put words on paper, to share the stories bubbling up inside of us. But, I have also found that writers are some of the most generous people I’ve known. They are generous with their time and talent. Moreover, they are generous with sharing themselves and their narratives, in whatever form that may be. In fact, the act of sharing any story is an act of generosity, a lamp in the darkness as we search for meaning in this life. We are all light-bearers.Throughout the month of May, we will explore the concept of writing as an act of narrative generosity. The writers in this series all come from very different backgrounds and their writing styles vary. But it seems each of them has found a sense of active generosity somewhere within their writing lives.We’ll begin with different forms of non-fiction, from an interview with Sonya Huber on writing about chronic illness to David Fitzpatrick’s journey from memoirist to mental health advocate. Rebecca Dimyan will write of family history and Colin D. Halloran of telling stories as a veteran. Kate Jonuska leads us into fiction and what we can learn from narrators unlike us, and Lynne Harris Heinzmann will discuss giving voice to figures out of history. Stephanie Vanderslice will introduce us to the generosity of other writers in her own journey and Erin Ollila will describe starting a literary magazine. Finally, Thomas Hahn will discuss reconciling creative and academic narratives.They’re wonderful pieces and I hope you are as moved by them as I was. Each of these writers is generous in spirit and craft. Beyond that, each writer has experienced a sense of generosity in giving of themselves through their work and the shared experiences they have discovered therein. Joan Didion said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And, each of these writers is living into their stories fully and finding ways to share this abundance with the world.