What Story Can You Tell That Only You Could?
By: Kamga Tchassa
Tags: Storytelling, Writing, Self, Creativity, Personal Growth

What Story Can You Tell That Only You Could?

You Have No Idea Who is Waiting On Your Story

This question has bothered me for weeks. The easy deflection I could come up with is that I should just keep writing and the story will tell itself. However, as I study better writers — especially here on Medium- I realize that this blind dive can only help for so far.

Then, you hit a wall.

Your writing becomes a rehash of everything you’ve said and when you try to “copy” others in the hope of improving, your voice airs like Frankenstein’s dirty, electric, underwear.

That’s why the question is becoming key in my process.

I am taking a writing course that’s forcing me to pause and really understand what “good writing” is. I’m reading popular articles and taking note of what certain pieces make me feel — especially trying to crack the elusive “headline code”.

In all this, I know I won’t improve in a few months. I know I will need to write and test and keep showing up.

Taking the time to reflect on this question does not remove the work required.

Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash

What changed?

Writing happened organically for me. I wasn’t really outspoken as a child. I wasn’t popular for anything ( except wearing glasses and having multiple surgeries which made sure while all my school mates did mandatory manual labor in boarding school, I had to watch from the sidelines because I was labeled “a patient”).

The thoughts I carried never had a way out. I can’t remember anyone even urging me to start a blog. It was the most natural thing.

As I shared my heartbreak stories, poetry, and cringe-worthy fiction, I grew an audience of people who knew me personally and actually enjoyed what I wrote. I would meet people who gave me compliments and said it was really good.

It was nice to hear but didn’t mean much.

Fast forward a few years of this, a couple of jobs I hated, moving to the US, getting married and “growing up”, now this innocent love for writing has become something else — something I want to do with the rest of my life.

There’s a certain balance to making such decisions, I have come to realize: if you push too much, you become stubborn to necessary changes. For example, if I think I have innate talent and can’t learn much from a writing course or a book, then I am doomed to fail this life goal.

On the other hand, if I don’t take this seriously enough; if I don’t invest the time and effort required — I won’t improve on the existing skill, nor would I learn the ancillary skills needed to thrive as a writer in this age.

It’s the balance that begs the question.

A story ( or stories) only I could write, guarantee the unique nature of my value proposition to the world. But this story, if poorly told, doesn’t move the dilemma.

Photo by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash

The first step is to identify the story.

What will I write about? Why does it matter? Who is it for?

The next step, obviously, is to tell the story.

What’s the best way to say it? How can I tell it in such a way that no one else could such that it will be truly mine?

We all know a friend who knows how to tell the best stories. When something happens and he/she is present, we don’t mind telling them to narrate what happened because we know they’re good at it.

Everyone is good at something. We all have something inside that we naturally gravitate towards and that calls us to make — a calling.

The difficulty I have — which I think most people do — is finding that balance between working blindly on your calling and getting help.

Between telling the same stories and changing things up. Between rehashing personal life anecdotes and digging deeper.

I once read somewhere that in order to be a writer, you have to live a full life. That your stories will come from living. There’s a lot of truth in this.

Yet, as we’re all holed up at home and working remotely, I wonder how much of life we’re living. I wonder if this confinement isn’t the trigger we needed to realize that life doesn’t have to mean physical travel or seeing places.

That maybe, just maybe, we have more stories in us than we’ve dared to explore.

As I consider this, I realize that yes, I may have written about the heartbreak, but I never delved deeper into how that changed me or affected the way I now behave in my relationship.

I may have written about my fresh experience in the US, but not about how I no longer associate myself with the label “immigrant”.

I may have mentioned my highschool years weren’t fun, but I’ve never explored how the culture set me- and others — up to be unprepared for real-life problems with many of us unemotionally mature enough to deal with many things.

Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash

There’s more than meets the eye, yo.

There are so many stories we have inside of us, waiting to be called out. Because we’re not still enough — not willing to sit with our thoughts — or not willing to engage in deeper thought and journaling, we “waste” stories that could otherwise be valuable to others.

So, when I ask this question, what story could you write that no one else could: it doesn’t mean the next Harry Potter. It doesn’t mean working on a story until it’s “perfect” or waiting until you feel like a writer before you write.

No.

It means going inside, finding a truth you have that you may not have articulated, then sharing to the best of your abilities.

This will require shedding your ego — as you learn how to do this better.

It will require learning from others, undoing bad storytelling habits.

Keyphrase: best of your abilities.

It may mean writing about topics you’ve never considered ( I’m writing a piece on better decision making and scared shitless about how “unme” it sounds. I request feedback from a writing partner who knows more on the subject and his pointers were invaluable).

The price of being a better storyteller involves being willing to find your voice beyond the ego, beyond what you know to be “you”.

We’re all changing and the way we perceived “love” or “money’’ a few years — even months ago — isn’t the way we do now.

That story? That evolution you’ve achieved? That’s unique to you.

The world needs this story to know it’s possible to evolve.

You have no idea who is waiting on your story — the story only you could tell.

Don’t second guess yourself. Open that new document and start.

You have it in you to tell beautiful stories. I know this. You know this. You wouldn’t be fighting so hard to be better if you didn’t.

We want to hear from you — the story only you can tell. Because there’s no one who has lived the life you live.

Tap into that. Spend time with yourself. Practice more, try different things. Free yourself from the pain of tying your ego to any such feedback, use everything to grow and become a better storyteller.

Become yourself.