Myth – Untellable Stories

Truth in Myth

Myth is not fantasy. So says J.R.R. Tolkien in Tree and Leaf. Fantasy is essentially untrue; myth is a truth so deep that it cannot be told in ordinary genre or language.

Nonfiction is the genre I feel most at home with, in my reading as well as my writing. Good nonfiction, like Simon Winchester’s Krakatoa and David McCullough’s The Great Bridge, read like well-written novels. These works stay within expected boundaries – rather safe.

Yet any of us would be hard pressed to find areas of our culture that were not in some way shaped by our mythological underpinnings. In the opening paragraphs of his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell tells us that myth is pervasive throughout the world and flourishes in every culture as a source for the very building blocks of civilization.

Myth spills out of set boundaries. Its inherent depth is palpable, somewhat intimidating, foreign and attractive all at once. The slightly shadowed melancholy part of me, the hiddenness that is part and parcel of the introvert, is drawn to myth. At the very least I can say I’m acquainted with the pitfalls and glories of deep places. We’ve had a push/pull relationship for years.

A few years ago I delved into mythical writing a bit, when I decided to become a “Wrimo,” taking a run at NaNoWriMo’s challenge to write a novel in thirty days. Every November this nonprofit organization dedicates itself to encouraging would be writers, young and old, to enter into their world of literary marathon. Each entrant commits to writing a novel of at least 50,000 words from scratch with only an outline of sorts in mind. It sounded to me like a great stretching exercise, stretching into the process of pure writing, without editing, without self-censorship, just writing – a lot, every day for thirty days.

The only genre I could think of that would give me the kind of inner freedom I would need and that would contain the breadth of backdrop for such a free-wheeling project is myth. I settled on a heroine akin to one of the three Norns in Norse mythology, which I hoped would lend some credence to my odyssey and provide an anchor of sorts.

The writing of the odyssey unfolded almost without effort, not that it was an instant masterpiece, quite the opposite; it was rife with glaring inconsistencies and at times overrun with predictable clichés. But it did rise up from a rather mysterious depth. It did lend empowerment for some new language and it did carry me to new places, causing me to ask questions, important ones, many of them unanswerable. Sometimes the best road forward is the one that diverges from certitude.

The untellable is often the raw material in the writer/alchemist’s laboratory, ingredients that may become catalysts for creating something yet to be named, or potions that have extraordinary healing power, or stories that become the coin of life. If we would be worth our salt as storytellers and hearers, we will fill our coffers to the brim with both tellable and untellable stories.

What deep truth are you nurturing that might be best told using myth?

Writing Prompt Word For the Week: Shadow