Any good story can galvanize a person, make him/her think about things a different way, reassess their own motives and needs, but that's never my intent. That's an unintended consequence of me just trying to entertain, to write what we used to call 'ripping yarns.'
Interpretation
Stories can profoundly influence thought and self-reflection, even when that isn't the author's intention.
Raymond E. Feist suggests that while storytelling has the power to impact readers by prompting them to reevaluate their perspectives and motivations, his primary goal as a writer is simply to entertain. This highlights the dual nature of storytelling, where entertainment can lead to deeper introspection as a byproduct.
In practice
Sharing this quote during a writing workshop to emphasize the power of storytelling.
That's how I make work. Along the way, I take notes, I read about history and popular culture. Sometimes I act out things in the studio. I go back to my mother's hair salon so I can hear three voices going all at once. I pull inspiration from everything.
I believe in sketching because there is something very sensitive in sketching, you know, in sketches that you don't have out of a computer that looks the same like everybody even if, later on, the dresses are OK, but I like to sketch, and I like to see trails made after my sketches that look the same. It is you know, what I like.
I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.
The last light, in the last window, went out. Only the unstoppable machine of the sea still tears away at the silence with the cyclical explosion of nocturnal waves, distant memories of sleepwalking storms and the shipwrecks of dream.
We need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the practice of an art.
For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence over everything else. I have never sat down to write with broad, sweeping ideas in mind, and certainly never with a specific agenda.
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