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Newsletter: 19/1/28: February is the month of reading and storytelling – meeting Friday

Hi everyone,

Welcome to February, the month of groundhogs, valentines, Fastnacht, ashes and Candlemas, not to mention all the writing observances this month. February is the month of reading and storytelling — the sharing of writing, which is rather apt for us.

We will be sharing Friday night at 7:00 pm in the Council Chamber of the Tofield Town Office, though those who attended our last meeting will attest that the kitchen works too in a pinch. And it was truly pinched, wasn’t it?

There is a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien about our fascination with story. He intended it for epic fiction — likely prose, but it applies equally to nonfiction and poetry that explore significant topics.

“If you really come down to any large story that interests people — holds the attention for a considerable time … human stories are practically always about one thing, aren’t they? Death. The inevitability of death.” — Tolkien in Oxford (1968), a BBC 2 television documentary

Writing — even nonfiction — is about change and its implications: how we perceive it, how we understand it, how we cope with it. This “about”, this message, we often call theme. But theme is less about the message we want to tell or the lesson we want to teach and more about what our readers think about and experience because they read our writing. This is a significant departure on how theme is normally perceived, as a prescriptive topic that restricts and controls everything about our writing. Instead, as Doug Kurtz describes it, “theme is a byproduct of the concrete events of the story”.

In my own writing, particularly of The Lost Room, I found Kurtz’s description of theme to be true. The Lost Room has always been an ecological fantasy, but it developed a deep, ubiquitous, even pivotal theme of recovery from loss, a theme I did not realize until I recently reviewed the story. D.G. Rettig takes this sentiment of developing theme further, asking writers what their writing is really about.

I close this letter asking you the same question. We write because we enjoy it. We write because we want to explore and express our thoughts. But what do your readers take from your writing, even if you did not notice your writing was saying it?

You write. We share.

Join us Friday night as we celebrate and discuss our craft. Remember all writing is welcome, whether nonfiction, fiction, poetry or prose. I look forward to talking with you.

Until Friday, keep safe and keep writing,
Shawn