Tell Your Story, Save the World
Writing for NaNoWriMo this year might be the most important thing you have ever done.
Seriously, hear me out.
National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo, is an “annual, Internet-based creative writing project that takes place during the month of November. Participants attempt to write a 50,000 word manuscript between November 1 and November 30.”
Maybe you’re not sure you’re up for it this year. Maybe you’ve participated in it once or twice in the past and didn’t accomplish your goals. Or maybe you, like so many of us, are feeling distracted and anxious with the dystopian state of the world this November. I feel you.
Of course, don’t forget to get out there and vote this November.
But I want you to consider the possibility that telling your story — using the time in November to motivate you to get that story out of your head and onto the page — might be pretty important too. Consider that there might be something larger at work here.
First, for some context, let’s back up.
Waaaay back.
Human beings have been on this planet for about a million years or so. And for the vast majority of that time, we’ve lived in isolated, rural, extended-family groups. The moments of contact between truly distinct cultures were fleeting and unsustained. It wasn’t until as recently as 2007 that the world’s population became more urban than rural. The 21st century is the first primarily urban century in human history.
The twin processes of urbanization and globalization have drawn together vastly different cultures, values, languages, and religions, without much common glue to hold us together. No ancient story of how this can work. No shared mythology for us to bond over.
And without that, it’s plain and obvious that humans have the tendency to alienate and destroy each other.
But is there also something else inside us? Something that can draw us together?
Some people believe that we can be united in commerce, that we can be bound together in the marketplace, knit together by our mutually interdependent transactions. But commerce has a way of devolving into greed, and yielding vastly different outcomes for participants on opposite sides of the marketplace, creating resentment and spite.
What about education? We hear a lot discussion in the USA about how the so-called “core curriculum” for educating kids is “S.T.E.M.” — Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. This presumes that other types of learning are less important. History, language, literature, civics, the fine arts and humanities. Less important. A concerted effort was made in the early 2000s to defund such educational elements in favor of S.T.E.M.
Creative writing — storytelling — might not even make the top ten in some people’s minds.
But try teaching STEM without stories, and I will show you certain failure. Ever heard a scientist talk about relativity? Suddenly, you could be standing in a poetry slam for the amount of stories and metaphors you hear from them. I dare you to try teaching math without telling a story. If you have ever known a mathematician, they only think in stories. If you know any engineers, they only work on story-problems. That’s their life. How do they discover and understand those engineering problems? Someone told them a story.
Incidentally, this is exactly why some of our students never engage with math or engineering, they haven’t bought into the story. Why do they need to know this? How is it relevant? Nobody told them the story.
Still not convinced? If you don’t think that storytelling is important, ask yourself this: why was basic literacy — writing and reading stories — punishable by death for slaves during most of the history of the U.S. South? Someone sure thought it was important. Important enough to kill for.
Because stories are power.
They always have been. From the time that we huddled together in caves and listened to the fear in the dark, we told stories. Knowledge, science, survival, has always been passed through millennia by the telling and retelling of stories. Reading stories and watching movies is literally mind-travel.
We are story organisms. Our life is a story life. Stories are how we remember. How we relate. How we learn. How we love. How we heal. How we understand.
Any society that cuts itself from this root feature — storytelling — is near its end. We must push forward a new golden age of storytelling. We must reconnect our spinning world to its root of storytelling. We must understand each other again.
There are so many ways our society is tearing itself apart, it’s difficult to pin down one cause. Legions of commentators diagnose our social ills every day, and have many good insights, but consider this: One of the main ways we hurt one other right now is through false stories, laden with accusations, stereotypes, prejudices, and hate. Social media makes these stories lightweight, and encourages us to casually throw them around like daggers.
Ironically, fiction is the antidote to these false stories.
Even though a fictional story isn’t literally true, it can be emotionally true. Fiction can introduce us to characters we might otherwise never have known. It can open a window into a whole new world, with attitudes and ideas and personalities and cultures we would never have seen, from the limited perspective of our own mundane day-to-day lives.
When someone reads an enthralling story, it reminds them that they’re capable of understanding someone else’s mind. Sharing stories is a forge for building empathy with people from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures.
I dare say, the act of reminding someone of their capacity for empathy is a radical act.
If you could wave your magic wand and create an empathetic connection between two people, would you be impressed with yourself? I would. How would you use your god-like power? How often?
The thing is, you absolutely do have that power and I am asking you to use it now. Before it is too late. Before our ability to understand each other is gone.
That’s exactly why Benji Smith and I created Shaxpir. We wanted to equip the world’s writers with unprecedented tools so they can write their best stories. We want to serve those that understand the power of storytelling.
So consider yourself having been called. Your story is summoned. You have one month to write your first draft.
You, you scientist of story, you technologist of telling, you mathematician of meaning, you engineer of empathy, you powerful human being, invoke the word, open the world, save us.
Shaun Parkman
Chief Operating Officer
Shaxpir
