The Fundamental Art of Storytelling

Gary ChandlerTwo years into my college career, I decided to change tracks completely and pursue something I actually enjoyed: creative writing. When I mention this, most people have a tendency to stifle a laugh and ask—as politely as possible—what I’m doing with that degree. I don’t take offense. I get it; reading as a form of entertainment has been proclaimed to be on its deathbed more times than anyone cares to count. Actually making a living solely as a writer? Good luck winning that lottery, the world seems to scoff, with a perpetually rolling set of eyes.The skepticism isn’t difficult to understand. A decade ago, when I was still in college, literature seemed to be in a particularly precarious position. The online magazine was relatively new and untested. Bookstores kept closing, as the giant chains muscled in. Then, later, even the giant chains began to go out of business. What hope was there for books when the latest generation was being reared on a steady diet of Mountain Dew and Call of Duty? My teachers seemed to feel this keenly.“If you chose writing because you thought it would be easy, just wait till you get into the real world,” a professor of mine once cried out in exasperation during class. There were other meltdowns, from other teachers; weary reminders to expect rejection after rejection after rejection; miserable reports of new novels being remaindered and returned, only to sit in a sad unopened box in the closet. Even my “Business of Writing” class was more a weekly exercise in setting one’s expectations far below the bar than the learning of any tangible business skills. You poor bastards, our professors seemed to be saying, at the time. You have no idea what you’re getting yourselves into.Ten years later, I think I have a better understanding of what they were trying to tell us. They weren’t trying to prepare us for the death of literature. They were trying to prepare us for the reality that most people don’t simply “make it” as a writer. A career is built over a lifetime, and the industry will change a great deal in due course, but a great deal will also stay the same.This September, I was lucky enough to see Ursula K Le Guin speak at Powell’s for the re-release of her book on writing, Steering the Craft, originally published in 1998. As testament to the shifting plates of literature, the book’s summary reads: “Completely revised and rewritten to address the challenges and opportunities of the modern era.” Specifically, the book focuses on constructing a narrative—not the marketing of an end result.When asked at the event about the future of publishing in fiction, Ursula K Le Guin’s answer was straightforward: “I don’t know.” Though, she joked, she’d be a very rich woman if she did. Ursula K Le Guin made another point, after that, which is core to the intersection of literature and technology. To paraphrase: Technology might make it easier for us to access stories, or write them down, but the fundamental art of storytelling hasn’t changed since we started etching images into rocks.I don’t believe (as some do) that the advance of technology spells the death of literature. If anything, I believe English language literature has been rescued from a point of stagnation. When John Scalzi called living as a straight white male “the lowest difficulty setting there is,” the analogy took hold for a reason; it rang true. For centuries, the literary scene has been dominated by straight white men. In recent years, this has become a far more visible issue, buoyed by the interconnectivity of the web.The internet’s effect on the social landscape of literature cannot be overstated. It has allowed countless new publications to arise and thrive, offering new platforms for those previously excluded from audiences. Lightspeed Magazine, with its sarcastically-titled “Destroy” series, has continued to provide a fantasy and science-fiction publication specifically for the writing of those who don’t identify as straight white males. Podcastle and Crossed Genres are currently engaged in producing similar anthologies, and nearly every magazine in the genre scene now includes a call for diversity in their submission guidelines. Literary criticism, too, is no longer confined to the exclusive print publications or the academy; it’s found in blog entries, personal essays, and social media sites all across the web. As a result, social issues in literature have become a national talking point—and a heated one at that.Between the attempted rigging of the Hugo Awards, and the recent “Yi-Fen Chou” pseudonym scandal, it’s been a tumultuous year for the literary scene. Jenny Zhang’s excellent article on white poet Michael Derrick Hudson’s use of a Chinese pen name puts a spotlight on many of the hushed, lingering racial biases in the literary world. And, being published on BuzzFeed, it does so on a platform of enormous reach, dipping into the social feeds of millions outside the immediate literary scene. Ten years ago, such a level of exposure for an article about literature would have been unlikely. With the advent of the internet and the rise of online magazines, literature has gradually adopted a more inclusive vision of the world, and it will only continue further along this path. As to how the methods of composing and delivering literature will change in the future, one can only speculate. In the short term, the following seems likely: podcasts will continue to grow in popularity. Digital sales will continue to outpace physical sales. Video games will eventually breach the uncanny valley and blur the lines of interactive fiction. And yet, for all that, the writing of stories is unlikely to change; the struggle and love of the act of creation—the sacred process that differs for every writer—will remain.So, too, will the classic forms of literature. I don’t believe that the novel, or the short story, or the poem, will ever truly cease to be. At least, not in my lifetime. Not until we have ascended from this earth in a collective network of consciousness, or have evaporated wholesale in some nuclear burst of flames. As long as there are humans on this earth, there will always be some mad person etching their dreams into the nearest surface. After all, if we lose that, what do we have left?Gary Emmette Chandler works from his apartment in Portland as a copywriter and web developer, mostly in pajamas, with a cat nibbling at his leg. His fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Pantheon, and Fantasy Scroll, among others. You can follow his hungover ramblings on Twitter @TheWearyLuddite, if you like.