From Wikipedia;

Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, and images, often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation, and instilling moral values. Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot, characters, and narrative point of view.

A writer is a person who uses written words in various styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce various forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, poetry, plays, news articles, screenplays, or essays. Skilled writers are able to use language to express ideas and their work contributes significantly to the cultural content of a society. The word is also used elsewhere in the arts – such as songwriter – but as a standalone term, "writer" normally refers to the creation of written language.

Hack - a colloquial and usually pejorative term used to refer to a writer who is paid to write low-quality, rushed articles or books "to order", often with a short deadline. In a fiction-writing context, the term is used to describe writers who are paid to churn out sensational, lower-quality "pulp" fiction such as "true crime" novels or "bodice ripping" paperbacks. In journalism, the term is used to describe a writer who is deemed to operate as a "mercenary" or "pen for hire", expressing their client's political opinions in pamphlets or newspaper articles. So-called "hack writers" are usually paid by the number of words in their book or article; as a result, hack writing has a reputation for quantity taking precedence over quality.

There is a good little movie out there called ‘The Words.’ It is the story of a young man, a New Yorker, whose sole ambition is to be a writer. He dedicates himself to writing a successful novel, one that will launch his career. He is assisted in this endeavor by an understanding wife he loves dearly and an indulgent father.

In time, after rejection after rejection, he has no choice but to get a job, but does not, at first, give up the dream, one that is dying slowly. Then one day he finds an old typewritten manuscript in a second hand leather briefcase his wife bought him. After reading it he realized what he has been writing will never measure up to the work he found. For reasons he does not understand, he copies the manuscript on his laptop computer, word for word. He doesn’t even correct spelling errors. When his wife, who also uses the laptop, finds it and reads it, she raves about it, all but crying as she tells him how wonderful it is.

Well, you guessed it. He submits it for publication under his name. Overnight he becomes the darling of the New York literary world, catapulting him into the limelight he had always aspired to.

Unfortunately, the turd in the punchbowl floats to the surface when an old man confronts him one day and informs him the story was not a work of fiction, that it was a true story which he wrote but lost one day when he left his briefcase on a train.

I’ll not tell you how things play out. It is a good little movie and for those who put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, it is worth a look.

I relate this story because I have always been fascinated by what motivates people to write. Of the writers I know, or have known since some are now dead, there is a story behind the reason each of them sat down before their typewriter or keyboard and told stories. Two did so as part of their struggle to come to terms with the Vietnam War. Another was the literary world’s very own Walter Mitty, a great writer, but one who sought to live vicariously through his writing and the real life warriors he had an opportunity to rub shoulders with. The patriarch of the group, the very personification of a dirty old man who love to remind people he was the most prolific writer from Alabama, (to which I replied he was the only writer from Alabama), was and will always be a superb storyteller who actually was a part of the world he wrote about. Me, I took up the craft quite by accident.

When I arrived in Korea for an unaccompanied tour, my sponsor told me in the year I would be there I would become a fanatic about something. Since the professional girls in Uijongbu did nothing for me and I wasn’t about to become a bar fly at the O Club, I started writing my own take on a book a former British Army general wrote about. Well, I found it was great fun. In Korea it was a form of escapism. Anyone who ever worked in an Ops center of a bunker buried under a mountain where there was always something going on can appreciate the need for a wee bit of escapism.

Writing is now a passion, one I enjoy immensely. It has proven to be both profitable and life changing. The one thing it did not do was cause me to forget I was living in the real world. You see, in the movie ‘The Words,’ at the very end one of the characters makes the point that fiction and reality come close, but never touch, that a writer must chose which he, or she, prefers. And one who has read any of my stuff knows which one I picked.

This leads me to the point of this piece. As mentioned, in my travels I have come across a fair number of storytellers, writers, and hacks. Many cannot tell me why they write. Like me, they simply started. Others set out in pursuit of an agenda, to promote a cause or to right the wrongs of the world by wielding their mighty pen, crusaders clad in paper armor seeking to slay dragons. A few, much like the character in the movie, have taken up writing with the goal of becoming the next F. Scott Fitzgerald, wined and dined by New York’s literary glitterati. In doing so many lose their way. I expect a fair number become so enamored by their fame that they willingly forget about telling stories, churning out books that are shadows of their early works, rehashes of the same story, or simply a collection in which paper cutout characters go from scene to scene with little purpose and even less soul. In short, they become hacks. Granted, some can make a handsome career out of being a hack, provided they have a following that enjoy what they write.

It is not my purpose here to create divisions within the ranks of writers who contribute to TS/BC or claim one person’s reason for writing and the material they produce is superior to another’s. Nor do I expect the patrons of this website will be influenced, one way or another by what I said. People who read the stories here on TS/BC do so for reasons that are as varied as motivation that motivated their authors to them and will continue to follow their favorite authors because the stories those authors write strike a cord with them.

This piece, (and I hate to use the term), is a think piece, a brain fart, if you will. In my last blog I mentioned that it was not always necessary to have a happy ending to a story, a point that provoked some interesting responses. I expect this little ditty, which is really only an observation, will do likewise.

Any who, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

HW Coyle