I presently teach in the writing department at Western Connecticut State University. But before I did that, I held a number of jobs, and one was working for this guy named Lenny who owned a small liquor store.
Every morning Lenny would come in with a new story. Nothing elaborate–maybe his 4-year old son had eaten a dog biscuit–but Lenny found the tale entertaining and figured his customers would enjoy hearing it. It was my job to keep the shelves full and handle the register if Lenny was busy, so I had a front row seat to pretty much everything that went on.
And this is what I observed.
As the day progressed, so did Lenny’s story. He’d note a laugh. He’d invent details. He’d lengthen and cut and even lie. By noon, the boy may have eaten a box of dog biscuits, and by five–just in time for the after work crunch–the lad was howling at the moon and rolling on his back to have his tummy scratched. Lenny had taken a mere shaving of reality, added imagination, gauged his audience, and become a storyteller.
And this is what we need to do. Writing is rewriting, as the old adage goes, and unless we are constantly aiming to improve the ideas we initially come up with, we are doing little more than talking about a boy and a dog biscuit.