A Five Minute Free write example:
From time to time, I free-write if only to get the bad ideas out of the way. Spelling and grammar don't count in a free-write. The point is to have something to say and then saying it. Later, you can return and find the best way to say it.
Recently, I have been podcasting about storytelling and the process of telling stories. There is increasingly a difference in my mind between stories and their tellings. I have read highly engrossing papers on folklore which are almost entirely story with little to no telling and I realise now how far from stories the tellings which have been collected actually are.
This is especially relevant in our society today because we seem to be dominated by narratives. The way stories get told impacts our lives, our governments, our police, and our marketplaces. Every part of our daily living is in some way immersed and saturated in tellings, in narratives; and people are more or less beginning to realize how sensitive and permeable human beings are to tellings.
The only way out is to generate counter tellings, counter stories. Truth which is based in happy accidents, deductive tinkering and empiricism is fragile and must be defended. Stories are both the weapons and the walls.
