How to Kill a Storyteller
It's not the way you might think, Mr. Hitchcock
“Sixty-three buggy-eyed flies on the wall / Sixty-three buggy-eyed flies / Take one down, shake it around, sixty-two buggy-eyed flies on the wall.”
—An awful drinking song I just made up*
I miss me.
The me who carefully crafted an idea even if he was just experimenting at the time. Like this, back when I was on Medium. I took 100 days to write about the drawing I was doing on each of those 100 days. This is Day 15 and it’s still misunderstood. By “misunderstood” I mean roofing and sheet metal professionals still think I need their services.
Yeah, like I need a hole in my head.
*Sigh*
How, you might wisely ask, does one do that—the “careful and experimenting” part? Welp, it’s no cake walk. If you carefully craft too carefully you, well, overthink.
Or you do what I’m doing now, and you experiment. You’re flying by the seat of your pants. I hate flying by the seat of my pants. My pants weren’t made for that level of stress. Then I’m flying naked. Hey! A new horror movie idea!
Look, I’m a recovering overthinker. Years working the editorial side when my heart at its glowy-golden beating best sidled up to all the poets, the playwrights, the film directors, the actors, singers, songwriters, and painters. I truly love those folks. All of them.
But it’s like I’m a kid at a candy store—except outside looking in.
I miss me. The young me who dreamt wildly. The crazymaker, heartbreaker, risktaker … backbreaker. Oh no, not that again. That’s on the final Led Zeppelin LP, where they’re all 90 and doing stage walks around the rock ‘n’ roll theme park. Is there a cringe emoji for that? There should be.
Dreams are confusing and expensive and burdensome. But over my entire life, one thing is certain.
I’ve never been able to shake them.
There’s only one way you can kill a storyteller: By making sure they never feel compelled to tell their stories ever again.
The most efficient way to do that is not by damning them on social media, or hating their work in the local press or by word of mouth or dissing them in reviews.
It’s by getting into their heads and making them believe—truly believe—they are not worthy of being a storyteller in the first place.
You don’t bury them. You assist them in burying themselves.
So here’s what’s up with me and how it might impact the direction of this Substack.
I’m a storyteller who’s been buying his own self-made bullshit that he isn’t one. The last two weeks have turned the tables on that crap. But I have to preface it with a side story.
Over a decade ago I was in a screenwriting support group—a “script group,” as we called it. One of our members had a story she brought in, but gave us nothing new after that. I remember after we’d workshopped her script I asked what her new project was.
“I don’t have any ideas,” she said, “I don’t know!”
I recall thinking, “I have a million ideas and not enough time to do them. I’ll give you some!” Well, I didn’t say that to her but I know many people who feel they don’t have ideas when it’s possible they haven’t hashed through their own source materials. Or something else. But that writers’ group moment stuck with me because I realized, somewhat to my own horror, that I’ve always had stories to tell.
—End of side story.
The past two weeks revealed a “Come-to-Jesus Moment” with my story history. It came down to this:
What were the most important story ideas? (Yup, I had to rank them to myself.)
Why are they important? (If I died tomorrow, which would I regret not telling?)
Which stories give me the most juice to work on? (I get up in the morning, pants on like everyone else, but ain’t takin’ another step without that story’s monster mojo going forward.)
How is the best way to execute the work that needs to be done to realize these stories? (Let’s be realistic: Ain’t working on War and Peace [nope, ain’t got the time] but the planned scope does include a treatment and pilot episode script on one of the stories.)
The last two weeks have brought some new humans in the way of friends and possible collaborators—tearing me away from journaling and Substack writing—which I realize I need to cultivate (being new and tender shoots of relationships) so that’s been a thing. It’s added to the story work listed above and I’m grateful for the diversion.
Hey, you can literally KILL a storyteller. Pick any weapon and use it. But killing the storyteller only means their stories might live on—as so many stories have—meaning their deaths were just a chapter in the back pages of our larger story.
But the most effective way to kill a storyteller is find their “self-reject” button. And keep punching that motherfucker until the dogs howl into dawn’s early light.
Over the past two weeks I met with a mentor and a friend who assured me I could do what I was aiming to do by adding to my network, keeping at the writing desk, and giving a flying middle finger to that self-reject button. His support meant everything.
In the end, I’m only human. I’ve been amazed at the responses to my story pitches and hope to introduce you all here to these projects as they unfold. My mentor and I worked through a solid plan that will take me into 2023. The networking has begun. The pitches are landing on friendly ears.
RIP Gary Wright "Love Is Alive," "Dream Weaver," Spooky Tooth, et al. 1943-Sept. 4, 2023.