The Power of Story

The power of story.

I believe in this.

Stories tell us who we are. They tell us who we aspire to be. Stories make us better. And I don’t just mean highfalutin literature, but I mean everything from the dime detective novel to flash fiction and genre.

Look, I tried to write a romance novel once. Dismal failure, really. I had this long, convoluted, outline, stock characters, and followed formula to a T. Really, I had the hope to make money. Lots and lots of money. Because, well, I was broke. When I finished the draft, I sent the novel to publisher after publisher. After the first thirty pages, they always wanted to see the complete novel, and I’d send them the whole enchilada, and they’d write back and tell me that, though the story was good, I hadn’t written a romance. Well, what do you mean? There was kissing and some sex scenes, and even a fight to win the honor of the woman. I mean, riveting stuff. Nobody wanted to publish it.^[1] What I didn’t understand was the nature of story. Why it mattered, and why people who read romance read romance. The romance genre is about empowerment^[2].

I’ve tried my hand at fantasy fiction as well because I’ve always admired authors such Patricia Wrede^[3], Ursula K. Le Guin, and I grew up on Dungeons and Dragons without my parents’ knowledge. Again though, I didn’t really understand why I was trying to write these stories about elves and dragons or why the fantasy genre was even important.  Dave Robison writes on his Mythic Scribes blog that, “With a few rare exceptions, genre [fantasy/science-fiction/speculative] fiction is generally dismissed—even disdained—by ‘serious’ authors and critical reviewers alike.” Yet, many people, such as I once did, miss the point of fantasy. The genre opens to possibilities.
I could go through the entire list of genres: western, mystery, erotica,  whatever. Not really my point though. My point is the power of the story, and how that power has erupted across the Western World, thanks to new technologies and cutting edge companies such as Amazon.  It’s like a new Renaissance really, giving people from all walks of life the opportunity to tell their stories. The best invention since the printing press.

Self-publishing seems to get a bad rap though, especially from, well, “serious” authors and critical reviewers.

But if reading even the so-called junk—the romance, the mystery, the fantasy—if even that kind of reading works to empower with possibilities, how much more so does the actual act of writing empower possibility within the individual and society at large? Self-publishing, of course, is not a new endeavor, just the delivery method is new, easier, quicker, and more subversive to the vanguard publishers and gate-keepers. Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Deepak Chopra, Gertrude Stein, Zane Grey, Upton Sinclair, Virginia Wolff, Rudyard Kipling, Henry David Thoreau, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Beatrix Potter…..  those are the footsteps of far greater authors that I walk behind and into. And that’s pretty exciting. Pretty scary power.

So Shakespeare be damned^[4]. Let’s dig into all that indie stuff^[5]! Write something today.

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^[1] And now that I have the opportunity to publish myself, the thing will still never see the light of day. It has been shoved into a drawer, and should probably be burned.

^[2] Check out Anne Browning Walker’s article on Huffington Post; it’s from 2012, but still a really good read.

^[3] I met Ms. Wrede on a now, I am pretty positive now defunct electronic buliten board, if you remember what those are you have a pretty good idea of how old I am. Wrede encouraged me to attend the University of Iowa and learn more about creative writing. If I had known what I was getting myself into, I would have never taken her advice at the time, but I am so glad I did. I should probably get back in touch with her, though I doubt she even remembers me. I was just another fan I am sure. Another electronic blip that came across the screen in the late 90’s. Maybe she has a Twitter account?

^[4] Um. Not really. A canon of literature exists that tells us where we’ve been and where we should head. The canon, of course, has been traditionally associated with the British, but that mindset is slowly changing. A way more liberal, global approach needs to be still more fully embraced, but then that raises some amazing issues, like how the heck do you catalog all that information, how do begin to study a world literature. More to the point, when do you stop reading?

^[5] Maybe I’m saying this because I myself am an indie author.  I have an alterior motive. Buy my book. No. Actually, don’t do that unless you think you’ll like my book(s). Heck, I’ll give you a free copy if you want. Just email me at stevebargdill@gmail.com with FREE BOOK as the subject heading.

Being Hemingway and Another Ten Pounds

A new year, a new semester with one down and three more to go and eighty-five thousand books to read between now and then. My New Year's resolution was to sell more books, and two weeks into 2014 when I realized my resolution was something I had no control over.

Write more. That should have been my goal. Blog more. Loose another ten pounds. Spend more time with my kids. Compliment my wife more, because she deserves at a minimum that kind of treatment.

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5am is a beautiful time of day. In the mountains, the sky is black dark like midnight. The house is silent and cold. I turn up the heat, drink orange juice, and make coffee which is a gorgeous scent that cries out for bacon and eggs, a warm cinnamon roll with the icing dripping off onto your fingers. My schedule for the week is booked tight and will remain like that until mid-May with all the craziness of work and school and dropping the kids off at dance, a friend pressuring me into listening to his piano composition that I really really do want to listen to, but I'm not sure when I'll have time to schedule him; when will I have time for his music, when I barely know what my song is?

Odd at forty, pushing into forty-one damn quick that I haven't figured out my own song yet. Twenty years ago, if you had asked me who I was, I was cocky sure of my self-worth and identity. I knew where I came from. What I wanted to do. My New Year resolutions were more grandeur—like travel the world, hitchhike across America, write the Great American Novel, be more like Hemingway who was tough and manly and outdoorsy and the epitome of the self-reliant writer.

Hemingway's façade of toughness though, that's all it was—a façade. In Paris, he ran after other authors with starry eyes—Pound, Fitzgerald, Stein. Like he was a little boy running after someone big and famous like Peyton Manning.

I watch people walk across campus, especially professors. They are confident like Hemingway. They know what they are doing, who they are. They have it "all-together." And the students that worship them, the grad students that are intimidated by their credentials, their knowledge that we are all struggling to gain, and we look at them and say, "I want to be like that."

But everyone is like Hemingway. Everyone has a facade pointed outward, and the inner struggles of the soul are secret and dark like a 5am morning mountain sky. Perhaps the sun will break, and perhaps you'll catch a glimpse of soul-spark, be fortunate enough to hear their song, but they know and understand as little as you do.

And they are all chasing Peyton Manning. They're all making resolutions that they have no control over.

So I've changed my game. I'm not worried about book sales. My goal for this year is to give away more books for free. And to write a little bit every day about the small things, not anything as grandiose as the Great American Novel. To have more 5am mornings.
And maybe, along the way, I'll lose another ten pounds.

WASTELAND: THE END OF WINTER

 

“I thought this book was beautiful. Having just finished it, I feel like I have just woken up from a really disturbing dream” – Rose Actor-engel, Amazon

Christine and Jack sat on the back deck of their cottage and watched the stars fall into the lake. They whispered to each other, "Beautiful." But Jack did not know his life was to forever change. A plague came. Christine died. Aliens landed and they put things in his food and soap. The sidewalks lit up blue to let him know when he was allowed to go to the store. Filled with drugs, sex, and cigarettes, the first of six inter-related short stories that make up the entirety of the Wasteland series all styled after Winesburg, Ohio and As I Lay Dying. Based loosely off T.S. Elliot's poem of the same name, The Wasteland is told from the perspectives of the people living inside Jack's head.

 

 

 

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Steve Bargdill writes “literary stuff” with the occasional foray into speculative fiction. Originally from Ohio, he has lived in Dayton, Columbus, Troy, St. Marys, and New Knoxville as well as West Branch, Iowa; Lincoln, Nebraska; Muncie, Indiana; and currently lives in Laramie, Wyoming. Bargdill is the author of The Wasteland Series available on Amazon. He’s written for several newspapers and is currently a first year English graduate student at the University of Wyoming. You can read his short stories for free on Wattpad. You can also like him on Facebook where he posts a daily poem, Monday evening writing prompts, hump day videos and more nonsense!