Stories

I'm a writer. I write stories. I'm an author of stories and two novels in progress and one memoir. I'm also a poet. And I've written a few scripts; short ones (stage and radio).

Those are stories.

Recently I've been working with someone on making some life changes and we've been talking about "being in story." This isn't the first time this has come up. But I think I finally "get it."

Stories are good. Stories have drama and impact and can move, excite, give pleasure, explain, and so on. Being "in story" can have that same effect.

But the problem with being "in story" is that when that happens, I'm not being present with myself and my experience. My desires, wants, needs. I'm focusing on the other person/people/situation and not on my experience of it.

It's not easy to explain here and perhaps some of you are shaking your head. Some of you may not agree with that concept. And some of you may be where I've been with this idea and not totally understand the difference.

And maybe I shouldn't even write about that here. It's personal. It's private. Yet as a writer, as a very young writer, people (make that my mother) didn't believe me sometimes *because* I was a writer - I "told stories."

So now I'm writing. Writing a lot. Writing fiction and non-fiction and creative non-fiction. And I don't want to get caught "in story" when I'm doing my own personal growth work. The big break through is that I'm noticing and that I'm learning to feel the difference. And I wonder if there is a correlation that, as I work through some of the harder parts of the memoir, perhaps I'm being able to move out of being "in story" and can see when I'm in that outward focused place and move through it.

Writing. Being present. These are what I do as a writer. Which is different than being "in story" when things get hard or there's conflict.
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