LJ Idol Season 10, Week 14 , Campfire Stories
So this week.... this happened. C'est la vie.
Campfire stories. They are the tales we whisper in the dark. The heat of the fire warming our toes, the flames licking against small sticks that waft with the smell of sweet, heated sugar.
We watch faces change with delight or fear as the story reaches its conclusion. Smile as they shiver, laugh as a well timed scare brings screams and giggles.
It is storytelling at its finest, with a captive audience and a readymade atmosphere, quick to soak in the tale.
It’s not always that easy. Telling a tale. Some of us are born with a gift for sharing the images in our heads, a talent for weaving words, making them swing and sway to the rhythm of our pen. I’ve read books where the images dance across the page. Some of my earliest childhood friends, Lucy, Anne Girl, Katy. Were brought to me from well worn pages with tiny words that merged together to form whole worlds different from anything I could ever have imagined. I longed to share their adventures, to disappear into a world that made more sense, seemed more fun. Where rules were absolutes except when they took you to a world of magic, where it was always tea time and carpets could fly.
We live in a world built on stories. But what happens when you have no story to tell?
We are a family of storytellers. We tell each other stories in the car, whiling away stolen minutes in traffic jams. My husband who lacks imagination is dreading the day my son starts watching mainstream horror and finds out his father’s tales of a deathly fog, or masked Halloween killers didn’t quite originate from inside his head as he has so long been led to believe.
Imagination has never been my problem. Stories play out in my head frequently. Characters, ideas, images all playing out their tale, telling me where they want to go.
I don’t thI'mk im devoid of talent. When I write well, I think I craft a good story. When I understand my subject, when it speaks to me, the words can flow easily. Some of the best things I’ve ever written, I don’t even remember writing them, they just flowed, from pen to paper, fingers to the page.
But then come weeks like this week, the wall. We’ve all hit it. I knew the story I wanted to write, about a young boy, dealing with peer pressure, trying to live up to the others as he shares his campfire story. The tale has been rattling around in my head for days. I’ve talked it out, plotted it, built it out around a couple of lines of dialogue (God I suck at dialogue). I’ve started it, wiped it, started it again. And now here I am.
It’s ten minutes to deadline, I’m all out of byes and I have a story that refuses to be written, the most frustrating thing imaginable.
I can tell you it by the way, if you are sitting here, with me, around the fire. I can describe every moment in finite detail. The boys sweaty palms as he takes his turn at the fire. The way his tormentors faces glow in the firelight, transforming their sneers into something deeper and darker. I know how he feels, and I know how he will triumph. I know the story, and if I could talk to you, I could tell you it, if we were all camped around the campfire with our s’mores and cold hands, I could make you believe it. Make you feel for this poor boy who doesn’t know quite which story to tell.
But for now, his story and mine will go untold. It may creep out another day, the words may make sense and flow into shape, or it may remain spoken, a story told to my own eleven year old boy in the car, in the middle of a traffic jam, when he needs a fable to let him know it is ok to be scared, it is ok to be unsure, it is even ok to fail. Just so long as we never stop telling our stories, never ever silence our voices, always pick up our pens and start again.
There is always another story in there, just waiting to be told.
Campfire stories. They are the tales we whisper in the dark. The heat of the fire warming our toes, the flames licking against small sticks that waft with the smell of sweet, heated sugar.
We watch faces change with delight or fear as the story reaches its conclusion. Smile as they shiver, laugh as a well timed scare brings screams and giggles.
It is storytelling at its finest, with a captive audience and a readymade atmosphere, quick to soak in the tale.
It’s not always that easy. Telling a tale. Some of us are born with a gift for sharing the images in our heads, a talent for weaving words, making them swing and sway to the rhythm of our pen. I’ve read books where the images dance across the page. Some of my earliest childhood friends, Lucy, Anne Girl, Katy. Were brought to me from well worn pages with tiny words that merged together to form whole worlds different from anything I could ever have imagined. I longed to share their adventures, to disappear into a world that made more sense, seemed more fun. Where rules were absolutes except when they took you to a world of magic, where it was always tea time and carpets could fly.
We live in a world built on stories. But what happens when you have no story to tell?
We are a family of storytellers. We tell each other stories in the car, whiling away stolen minutes in traffic jams. My husband who lacks imagination is dreading the day my son starts watching mainstream horror and finds out his father’s tales of a deathly fog, or masked Halloween killers didn’t quite originate from inside his head as he has so long been led to believe.
Imagination has never been my problem. Stories play out in my head frequently. Characters, ideas, images all playing out their tale, telling me where they want to go.
I don’t thI'mk im devoid of talent. When I write well, I think I craft a good story. When I understand my subject, when it speaks to me, the words can flow easily. Some of the best things I’ve ever written, I don’t even remember writing them, they just flowed, from pen to paper, fingers to the page.
But then come weeks like this week, the wall. We’ve all hit it. I knew the story I wanted to write, about a young boy, dealing with peer pressure, trying to live up to the others as he shares his campfire story. The tale has been rattling around in my head for days. I’ve talked it out, plotted it, built it out around a couple of lines of dialogue (God I suck at dialogue). I’ve started it, wiped it, started it again. And now here I am.
It’s ten minutes to deadline, I’m all out of byes and I have a story that refuses to be written, the most frustrating thing imaginable.
I can tell you it by the way, if you are sitting here, with me, around the fire. I can describe every moment in finite detail. The boys sweaty palms as he takes his turn at the fire. The way his tormentors faces glow in the firelight, transforming their sneers into something deeper and darker. I know how he feels, and I know how he will triumph. I know the story, and if I could talk to you, I could tell you it, if we were all camped around the campfire with our s’mores and cold hands, I could make you believe it. Make you feel for this poor boy who doesn’t know quite which story to tell.
But for now, his story and mine will go untold. It may creep out another day, the words may make sense and flow into shape, or it may remain spoken, a story told to my own eleven year old boy in the car, in the middle of a traffic jam, when he needs a fable to let him know it is ok to be scared, it is ok to be unsure, it is even ok to fail. Just so long as we never stop telling our stories, never ever silence our voices, always pick up our pens and start again.
There is always another story in there, just waiting to be told.