Stories come and stories go. · The Storyteller's Path

Stories come and stories go.

There’s an old practice among some Japanese monks where they would write a poem and then release it into a river, letting the current carry it away. Not because the poem had no value, but because attachment can become a cage. The act of writing was the living thing. The page was only ever a leaf floating downstream.

Over the years, I’ve lost stories to crashed computers, floods, divorce, hard drives, moves, and the strange erosion of time. Entire worlds vanished. Characters gone. Thousands upon thousands of words disappeared into the fog.

But I’m still a writer.

A tree does not stop being a tree because a storm tears off a branch.

The story is not always the point. Sometimes the writing itself is the point. The practice. The attention. The shaping of thought into language. The quiet act of returning to the desk again and again, even after loss.

If you lost a project recently, grieve it. Seriously. But don’t mistake a lost manuscript for a lost voice. Those are not the same thing.

2 comments

Stories come and stories go.