Is Memoir the Origin of Storytelling?

Kendra Bonnett–Getting Read #28

This past weekend, I received an email telling me about Projeqt.com, a new storytelling engine for creatives. It’s in beta now, and I’ve signed up to test it…just as soon as they’re ready to let some more of us in.

I’m not sure that Projeqt.com is going to be some sort of incredible productivity and creativity-enhancing tool for memoir writers, but you never know. I’ll check it out and get back to you on that front. Or follow the link above and sign up to test it yourself. Also, today over on Women’s Memoirs (Memoir…it is about the story) I have a sister post that lists some of the interesting tools that I’ve found online that just might help aspiring memoir writers think through their story lines. I hope you’ll take a look.

And on Thursday, please be sure to check out Bettyann Schmidt’s ScrapMoir post on Women’s Memoirs. She’s got a special gift for everyone. I think you’re going to like it; Matilda and I are thrilled to be able to make this available.

Is a Traditional Storyteller a Memoirist?

So thanks to the Projeqt.com email, I got to thinking about storytellers. They’ve been part of our culture for such a long time…centuries before we could write. In fact, storytelling is more of an oral tradition that a written one. My mind kept questioning as my eyes and ears wandered across Google, YouTube, blogs in search of anything on the storytelling tradition.

Cave paintings date back at least 35,000 years. We have records of the stories and tales from Medieval minstrels and Renaissance bards. The fairy tales Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected in the 18th century had already been passed down from family to family, generation to generation. Hymns. Greek myths. The oral tradition of our native American tribes. Heroic epics…Gilgamest, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, Childe Harold. The Bhagavad Gita. Even the stories depicting Sasquatch date back to and have been passed around since the middle of the 19th century.

And the list goes on. But I got to thinking, how many of these stories were originally what we might call memoir vignettes? In each case, was there once a person who told the story in terms of his or her actual life? Did their children go into the woods, never to return? Was a curious lad killed by wolves? Did a handsome brother seek to admire his reflection once too often and fall into a river and drown?

I’m wondering if what we call myth, story and fairy tale today was–once upon a time–someone’s story. A memoir captures not only the events of our lives, but the thoughts, fears, emotions we carry within us. The ability to turn some of their experience into metaphor and allegory only suggests their talent as storytellers.

And the rest? Well what if the stories as they have come down through the ages is the result of the biggest, most elaborate game of Telephone we have ever imagined?