In thinking about writing this guest post (thank you, John!) I tried to remember when I first fell in love with stories – and for the life of me, I can’t! I vividly remember my primary school librarian introducing me to the world of Narnia with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and I remember choosing for myself the first of the Enid Blyton Secret Seven books that I read, but I just can’t recall a time when I wasn’t madly, passionately, devotedly and hopelessly in love with stories.
I do know I was young when cupid’s arrow hit. I was still in single digits. And now I’m in ever-escalating double digits and the love affair has not grown stale. I love stories as much today as ever I did when I was a child staring wide-eyed at the school library bookshelves thinking: Wow. Even better, there are so many different kinds of stories to enjoy these days.
Back in them Olden Dayes, television was pretty ordinary. I remember loving Rin Tin Tin and Skippy – and I’m pretty sure I was in primary school when I fell in love with Lost in Space because I distinctly remember racing home from Somerville Road Public School to watch The Detectives, a half hour crime show — Mark Goddard was in it and he was Major West in Lost in Space and I thought he was really cute. TV stories improved by the time I hit high school – there were the Irwin Allen sf greats like The Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, as well as Classic Star Trek, Daniel Boone, Tarzan – Ron Ely in a loincloth. Yum.
As I grew older there were more and more books waiting to be discovered. I remember graduating to the local public library and devouring the fairy tale series by Robin Jacques, and everything Andre Norton ever wrote, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, all the Enid Blytons, and then onto Alastair Maclean and Desmond Bagley. I read all the horse stories, the Jill series by Ruby Ferguson and the old Collins horse series by the Pullein-Thompson sisters. The Tom Swift series. Such a mish-mash of books.
Then in 1977 Star Wars burst into our lives. I don’t think I’ve ever loved a movie story quite as much as that saga of a galaxy far, far away. Don’t think I ever will. And in glorious circular fashion I’m now writing Star Wars books for other fans … who says life ain’t sweet?
And of course there were the novelists. I found Tolkien. I found Sue Grafton and Marcia Muller and Terry Pratchett and David Eddings and Georgette Heyer and Peter O’Donnell and Gordon Dickson and Ray Bradbury and Robert B. Parker and Orson Scott Card and Julian May and Bertrice Small and Dorothy Dunnett and I could fill an entire blog post with nothing but names.
So really, my life is stories and stories are my life. I seriously cannot get through a single day without a story fix. Before I broke into writing full-time I even had my own spec fic and mystery bookshop – stories literally were my livelihood. And they still are, only now I’m telling my own. Though I do miss the shop. At least, I miss talking story with the readers who used to shop there. I miss shoving a new book into their hands saying, You have to read this! You’ll love it! Really don’t miss the business side of business. Not my thing at all, as it turned out.
So what is it about the power of story? I think about this a lot, not only because I tell stories for a living these days but because I am still a willing slave to Once upon a time.
I’m an only child. Maybe that’s part of it. I had – still have – a vivid imagination, and loved to escape into other worlds. I especially loved to escape into other worlds when real life got too challenging, as real life always does from time to time. And if I’m honest, that’s also still true. When our mad world threatens to overwhelm me I dive into a book, or into one of the many, many wonderful tv dramas that are available to storyholics these days.
But it’s more than escape – although there’s nothing wrong with that. Everybody needs a way to decompress from the day to day stresses of modern life. It’s the joy of losing myself in someone else’s life for a while. There’s something terribly and wonderfully voyeuristic about stories. When they’re done right it’s like being a fly on the wall, like being made invisible so you can sneak into your neighbour’s house and see what’s happening behind the closed curtains.
A crazy confession: fictional characters have always been real to me. When the story starts, whether it’s in a book or on a screen or on a theatre stage, I surrender myself to the reality of those people. They live. They breathe. They exist. If they didn’t, how could I weep for them? Laugh with them? Hold my breath in terror for them? Get so angry for them, or at them, that I grind my teeth? If they aren’t real people in some weird, interdimensional, parallel universe way, then how could I possibly care so much about what happens to them? Throw a book across a room or scream at the television No! Don’t do it! You’ll hate yourself! Don’t!
But I do … because they are.
And that’s the power of story. To make us believe. To make us forget ourselves and invest in the lives and loves and triumphs and tragedies of people who live a little way over there, just a finger’s breadth out of reach, but who hold up a mirror and show us ourselves. Who remind us that we can feel. That we aren’t alone in our joys and our shames and our confusions. Who remind us over and over again: this is what it means to be human.
For me, life wouldn’t be worth living without stories. Stories help me make sense of the chaos. They help me to understand. And I guess I’m not alone in that – and for that I am profoundly grateful.
Karen Miller is the author of the bestselling fantasy duology Kingmaker, Kingbreaker, the fantasy trilogy Godspeaker, the bestselling tie-in novels Stargate SG-1: Alliances, Stargate SG-1: Do No Harm and Star Wars The Clone Wars: Wild Space. Writing as K.E. Mills she is the author of the Rogue Agent series. She can be found online at karenmiller.net.
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