Wally Lamb, On Storytelling

00:08 [Wally Lamb] Another thing that my teacher, Gladys Swan, taught me very early in my fiction writing, and I was a high school teacher at the time, and she said, "Well, what's your goal?" And I didn't have one particularly, so I had to make something up on the spot, and I said, "Well, every year

00:30 my high school students, one of the books they really enjoy is To Kill a Mockingbird," and I said, "and it really speaks to them, to kids, and I guess I'd like to write something that high school kids would read because they want to read it, not because they have to read it." And Gladys sort of frowned, and she said, "You know, the last thing you want to do is to preconceive who your audience is going to be." She said, "What you need

01:00 to do is write the story for yourself and let the audience that needs to find it find it." And I'm sure I had a dopey look on my face, and I said, "Well, I'm not quite sure what you mean, Gladys." And she said, "Well, I'll tell you what." She said, "My best advice to you is to go back and read ancient myth. It's no accident that these are the stories that have lasted the longest

01:30 because they're the stories, the archetypal stories, that people need to be told over and over and over again." And she said, "So go back and read the old myths. You're never going to tell a completely original story, the world is an old place. And all the stories that people need are already out there, not only in a culture but in all the cultures." She said, "The best thing that you can do is put your own original spin, give your own take, on the ancient stories."