Some weeks ago, I asked all of you to check the Storytellers Meetup page again the next week for upcoming events. As some of you might have noticed, this information has been a bit delayed. The great majority of you are writers, so you may understand that on some occasions when you sit down to create, nothing comes, and you are forced to wait for inspiration. In my case, I wanted to tinker with the format of the group, being that attendance to both regular gatherings and city excursions had previously been low. So, I was searching not for what would inspire me, but for what would inspire you.
At one gathering, a Storyteller told me, “I’m just trying to figure out where you’re coming from,” or something to that effect. What better way to inspire you to share your stories, than to share a bit of mine?
You know from my profile that I hold Bachelors’ degrees in Chemistry and Liberal Arts, and currently work in Finance (Accounts Receivable), and perhaps that’s part of why you joined. Or, maybe you saw my picture and were curious as to what kind of group a woman like me might lead. Or, maybe you came for your own reasons. Regardless of what brought you, my hope is to foster an environment where people with stories to tell can share them with similarly talented people.
My interest in writing may seem at odds with at least one of the disciplines I studied, as well as my current career path, but in reality it’s not. Overall, my pursuit in life is to gain a greater understanding—to see the world in which I find myself with increasing clarity, and to act with reasoned judgement. This is, in essence, a desire to put things in their correct order, and all the fields I have entered are at their root methods of ordering the world.
Chemistry and Finance are mathematical in nature, and, as Game theoreticians have postulated, so is human nature–the particular study of writers. The ebb and flow of love and loss, peace and war, famine and plenty, all move to an undulating rhythm which can be documented by the shrewd observer. How is it that we can read one novel and find it appallingly false, but read another and swear that it was based on a true story? The intrinsic rhythms of life come home to us in the process of living, and when they are captured on a page, we see the reasoning in the telling.
I am a writer by nature. Since childhood, I have sought to express what I see in the world around me. Beginning from elementary school, when I had a short story published in a collection, to my early teens when I interned at the Kansas City Star, to my days at UMKC when I wrote for the campus newspaper, and all the times in between when I regularly casted about for composition books to record my ideas, edited for others, and dabbled in poetry, the written word has been an inextricable part of my life. Amidst the ups and downs that all of us inevitably experience, that fact has not changed, and beginning this group was part of re-embracing that side of myself and bringing it again to the fore.
Maybe you’re like me, and are looking to reintroduce yourself to the life of a writer. Maybe you are already engaged in current writing projects. Maybe you’ve never written a creative word in your life, but have something you’d like to share with the world. No matter the case, this is the group for you. Inspiration is just around the corner.
With the Spring comes new clarity, new peace, new understanding. You’ve made it through a harsh Winter, and now is the time to look toward the future. To that end, the theme of this season and the next is ‘Seeing’. It is an opportunity to truly examine the lens through which you view the world, and to reinforce or reevaluate your observations. To quote Jonathan Price, author of Put That in Writing, “To write better, you must develop your taste for truth. You have to pay more attention to what you really think, feel, see, and want”. And I suggest no less.
That is where I’m coming from. Perhaps your curiosity has been satisfied; perhaps it’s only been piqued. Whether the first or the latter, It is my pleasure to say, hi, my pen name is Annabelle Thomas, and it’s great to meet you. I hope to see you at the next gathering.
Have a comment? Please leave it below.
KC Storytellers 