It’s not golden.
Momma said, “Silence is golden.”
Usually after a long day at work, when all she wanted was a little peace and quiet from her children. This theme was carried rather strongly through my school years, as teachers would say, “It’s better to be seen and not heard.” Also one of my favorites, attributed to ‘ole Honest Abe, “Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.”
I’m shocked at the amount of virtue that my culture has attached to the concept of silence. In hindsight, I’d have to say it’s a lie. That ‘virtuous silence’ now seems to be something of a fiction, some sort of unattainable holy grail that only exists in the minds of librarians and in the halls of some far away monastery high in the mountains of Tibet.Have I mentioned that I’m a writer? Sure, as of yet unpublished, but the more research I do about how to become a successful author in this noisy ‘look-at-me era’, the more I see loudness, raucous verbal gamboozling, being rewarded. While the quiet, silent types simply fade away, or never get noticed to begin with.
“Blog every day.” they say.
“Content, content, content!” they say.
The ubiquitous ‘They’, the beast that must be fed. I don’t like the ‘They’ and resent having to feed them.Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
I firmly believe in speaking up and speaking out about things you are passionate about. What I don’t understand is why and how being a Storyteller in today’s society requires me to inanely prattle on, in the most melodramatic and flamboyant ways I can, to curry favor from the ‘They’. That is wrong. I need to answer a couple of fundamental questions about the modern version of this craft. Maybe someone out there can help me.
How do I let my ‘readers’, my ‘platform’, get to know me without pimping myself and my word smything out?
How do I avoid cheapening my Tales with a bunch of verbiage about me and my opinions that are ultimately not as important as the tales themselves?