Author Archives: Sarah McElrath

About Sarah McElrath

A seeker, looking to find truth and wisdom in the world and through art, I work as a school librarian, writing and painting when I have time.

The Importance of Story

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Perfect Storm (picture by Roger Kirby)

I started thinking about the importance of story in one of those perfect storm sort of ways where a bunch of things all seem to converge at once. It began with a good book–which, I personally believe is where most good things start. I had become rather bored with the current rash of dystopic fiction. Not that I didn’t enjoy Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Legend (which, by the way, now has a sequel out), and Divergent (among others). But between the fictional and the real world doom and gloom (think politics in Michigan), I was in the mood for something a bit lighter. That’s when I found Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching books: The

1st Tiffany Aching Book

Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, and I Shall Wear Midnight. The books are all great fantasy adventures, but as a great storyteller, Pratchett weaves in the truths of humanity–some light and some dark. And many times throughout the novels, he talks about the power of stories, both the ones we tell ourselves, and the ones we tell others.

Right about that time (end of summer and beginning of a new school year), I came across a book (see? books again. I’m telling you, all good things….) called Significant Objects. The book:

Significant Objects

Collects the results of a literary experiment in which a best-selling or popular author wrote a short fictional prose story about an object on eBay, raising its value; the profit from the object’s sale then went to charity.

 

It was determined that in each case, it was the story that raised the value of the object. People bought the object because of the story. It got me thinking about what I value and why. How much do we value people because we know their story? And what happens when we learn the story of someone we previously didn’t like, or trust, or understand? Do they then gain value in our eyes? Could sharing stories destroy prejudice or racism? This was, so to speak, the second storm.

The third “story storm” came from, believe it or not, church. We started reading the book The Story, which is the Bible put in chronological order. Each Sunday the pastor talked about the Upper Story–what God was doing to restore humanity to His original plan to

The Story

create a place where He could live with us in perfect community–and the Lower Story–which is all the drama and actions that occurred on a daily basis among the Israelites (or us, for that matter). So this is God’s story, but it is also our story because He wrote us in as characters. We are not, however, the main character or the narrator. Sometimes it’s very easy for me to forget that. Human nature, I believe. We all want to be the hero or heroine of the story. Each Sunday I would hear more about the upper and the lower story and it would add to the swirling story storm in my head.

Of course, in the creation of this storm, there are other factors besides the three listed above. These are other things I have heard, read, experienced, written that shape my thinking as well. The Book Thief, Fahrenheit 451, Black Dragon, or other stories I’ve told myself to survive hard times… we live and breathe story.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be exploring the importance of story and what part it plays in our lives. Come join me and be a part of this story.

Story Storm

 

 

Celebration of ART

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Snowy Day

Today was the celebration of Peninsula Writers‘ Art-A-Day Challenge. The idea was to accept the challenge to be creative each day during the month. Through the use of Google Groups, participants posted their successes and challenges throughout the month. And today we all physically got together at Schuler Bookstore and presented

My Art-A-Day

our efforts.

I almost didn’t go. After all, it was snowy and I didn’t really have a whole lot to show for the month. I’ve been revising every day, but that makes for poor showing. Imagine me saying, “Look, on January 21 I cut out an entire scene!” Yeah, not so exciting. Still, I’d done a little painting and more importantly, I wanted to support my fellow artists. So I harried my children into coming with me and we gathered up any of the “art” we’d done during the month and headed off to Schuler.

Peninsula Writers Art Celebration

I’m glad I went. Not only was it inspiring to see what everyone had created, but it was affirming to me as an artist–and maybe even affirming as to the importance of art in our lives. People painted, glued, tangled, composed, sewed, scrapbooked, cooked gourmet meals, wrote, decorated a cast, created a collage, and thought–a lot–about art.

Time

One of the things that struck me is how often these creative people mentioned the difficulty in finding time for art, and/or the doubts they experienced about their ability, about their creativity. I thought maybe it was just me. When it was my turn to share, I shared what I had learned about creativity from John Cleese. The fact that creative people take time and foster a sense of play was important reminder to me, being the sort of person who doesn’t believe in “wasting time.” I like to feel I have accomplished a lot in the day–and that means having something to show for it.

I also talked about learning that creativity is work. (see post) Not that I didn’t KNOW this,

Chipping Stone

but that someone recognized it and essentially said it was okay–normal even. Just because I don’t have story ideas flowing out of me at every turn doesn’t mean I’m not creative. What a relief! And the fact that sometimes writing feels like chipping away at stone doesn’t mean I shouldn’t write.

A little later one of the participants, Matt Bliton, mentioned listening to NPR’s On Being where Krista Tippett interviewed  Brené Brown about her research on shame and how it affects creativity. Matt shared how often making ART is not seen as valuable. After all, some of us have JOBS. And he mentioned how Brené Brown said that this shame of not “producing” is especially hard on women. I can relate to this. It is hard for me to justify sitting and writing or painting when there are piles of dirty laundry and dinner to be made and kids to get in bed. The tyranny of the now is ever present, but we must remember to feed more than just our bodies.

So now I am home and January will soon come to an end, but the fire has been lit, and I will do my best to keep feeding it.

Fires of Creativity

 

 

Better Plotting: 7 Ways Your Characters Can Screw up Their Decisions

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See on Scoop.it – Feed the Writer

As people, we want to make the right choice, so it’s only natural that those are the choices that first come to us as we write. But doing the right thing doesn’t always cause wonderful conflict (though when it does it’s writing gold).

 

Characters shouldn’t act like people who’ve had three weeks to consider their options just because the author took that long to write the scene. A decision made in the heat of the moment isn’t the same as one made with weeks to consider.

See on blog.janicehardy.com