Sometimes the manuscript in question is coming out of a drawer where it has been hidden away for a little while or a long while, never seen by anyone. Sometimes it has been out into the world, made the rounds of several publishers and come back rejected. Sometimes the life story of the manuscript lies somewhere between those two extremes.

I always do look at the work before answering the question. But, to be honest, I have never yet answered that question with a “no.” And it’s hard for me to imagine the circumstances in which I ever would.

This is because I believe that anyone who is serious enough about themselves and their writing to devote a significant amount of energy to putting their thoughts on paper, and then to approach a professional editor with their work, and to have the courage to ask that editor for their opinion of their work, is someone who has an idea worth pursuing and the courage needed to pursue it.

When people ask me this question, I believe they are usually actually hoping to learn the answers to other questions that they are afraid to express (“Do I have any talent? Is my story worth telling? Is it publishable? Will anyone care to read it? Do I really want people to know this much about me and who I am?”)

So I thought in this post I would take on those questions one at a time:

Do I have talent? I don’t think talent matters very much. Having talent means, mainly, that writing comes easier for some people than for others. But even for very talented writers, writing a good book is still an awful lot of work. People who have little talent may have to work harder in some parts of the process, but people who have books in their hearts/souls/minds and who want them to come out are going to be so busy making those books be the best they can be that I think the energy expended on wondering about the question of talent is simply a distraction and a waste of time.

So I like to just ignore the whole issue of talent, and say that the really important question to ask is how hard you want to work on your book, how much time/energy/money you are willing to commit to making it happen.

That is a very different question, and it is an important question to consider, because that is the question that will determine whether or not your  book moves from dream or desire to reality.

Brenda Ueland, a writing teacher I admire a great deal, approached the question of talent in a very different way.  In her classic book If You Want To Write, she said “Everyone is talented, original, and has something important to say.”

I don’t believe everyone is talented, and I suspect Brenda Ueland didn’t really think so either. I think she was just tired of seeing wonderfully unique, original, sensitive people who had a desire to tell their stories being discouraged from even trying by wondering about whether or not they were talented. So I think that was the way she chose to deal with the question of talent.

Either way you look at it, it’s not talent that counts, it’s hard, persistent, and sustained effort over a long period of time. That, and belief in yourself, and the importance of your story. Which leads to the next question…

Is my story worth telling? The answer to this question is very simple: yes! I believe that every person’s story is worth telling. Without exception.

Is it publishable?  This is a question that used to be very hard to answer, because it was almost impossible to know whether or not a book could be published, and the outcome had so little to do with whether or not the book was any good.

Fortunately, we are living in a time when the answer to this question has become rather simple, because now, thanks to incredibly democratizing changes in technology, anyone can publish a book. (And for most authors self-publishing is a very attractive option to consider, and very often the best choice.)

Of course there is the question of quality, and how to turn out the best possible work without putting books through the traditional publishing process in which editors help shape, refine and (usually) improve books.  (Unfortunately, throughout the history of publishing editors and publishers have also been famous for failing to recognize brilliant work and rejecting it.) Today, a publisher’s rejection is not the end of the story. With appropriate care taken, and most often with the help of professional editors and designers, self-published works can be and indeed are being produced at a very high level of quality. (There is much more to say about all this. That’s for another post!)

Will anyone care to read it?  Most writers know that they have a certain number of people who will be not only willing but eager to read their work when it is finished. The question is, will anyone else? This is something of an imponderable, and also touches on the question of self-promotion, and how willing a person is to devote time and energy to letting people know about their work. But the basic answer to this question, I believe, is that when someone writes a book honestly and from the heart, there will be someone (probably many someones) in the world who will be not only receptive to reading that work, but who need it to be there for them, in some fundamental, critically important, and mysterious way. And finally…

Do I really want people to know this much about me and who I am? As I have said about my Writing from the Heart workshops, “Writing from the heart is a bold act: it is not for the faint of heart.” It takes a lot of courage and grit to write from the heart, especially if you take the additionally bold step of publishing your work and exposing yourself and your most intimate thoughts/beliefs/experiences to the world.

This is a question that each person must answer for him or herself, though good editors, writing coaches, therapists or friends can help writers think this question through and find their own best answers.

I believe that writing from the heart is healing for anyone. Publishing that work may or may not be important or right, and that is a very individual decision. Writing is private: publishing is the act of making writing public. I think it’s important for writers to think about what they hope to achieve through their writing, what their writing (and/or publishing) goals are, why they are doing it, and what they would gain (or possibly lose) in publishing their writing.

Of course some work is more self-revelatory than other work. But all writers who publish, whether they are writing fiction or nonfiction, are exposing themselves to public scrutiny, and that in itself takes courage.

As for those who dream of writing a book–and who are ready to roll up their sleeves and gird themselves for the hard work, and the emotional ups and downs they are sure to encounter along the way–I believe that it is always–yes, always!–a dream worth pursuing.

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and literature based in Silver Spring, Maryland.  She teaches literature courses in Paris and Hawaii for the Education Abroad program at Queens College, CUNY, and twice a year she offers Writing from the Heart workshops in a beautiful little village in the Champagne region of France.

“If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Today I was on the verge of breaking down and acting out, and knew I needed healing. (It had to do with an incompatibility between me and my computer, exacerbated by bureaucratic annoyances, the kind that can make you feel like throwing computers out windows. That’s all you need to know: you get the picture.)

If it were a sunny day in Paris I would have much earlier removed myself from the situation and gone to cool off in a park. But it was a rainy day, so I did the only sensible thing for someone in my situation to do.

I walked down the street–not very far–and found the first sympathetic café where I could spend an hour or two regaining my sanity and my sense of balance.

I am living in a neighborhood I’ve never lived in before, and this is the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve had the chance to look for my nearest café, my place of refuge in a moment like this.

I wasn’t disappointed.

I walked into the café I had chosen, trying to figure out first of all whether I wanted to be inside or out. Not an automatic decision on such a cool and rainy day. The young waiter behind the counter greeted me with a warm, slightly flirtatious grin and said “Vous désirez, Madame?” “Un verre de vin,” I answered. “What kind?” he replied, continuing to display a disarming, and charming, smile. “What kind of what?” I replied, surprised and confused by the sudden switch into English. He in turn, confronted with my American accent and with the unexpected counter-question, scurried back into the comfort (and beauty) of his own language, where we remained.

I wanted a white wine, le moins chere. He recommended a Sauvignon (“very feminine”). I went outside and chose my table. The Sauvignon arrived, along with a few thinly sliced pieces of saucisson elegantly arranged on a tiny plate. The glass was perfectly chilled, the Sauvignon the perfect choice. I was happy already, with the first sip, and the knowledge that I could be here for as long as I wanted, free to enjoy my solitude in the company of strangers.

I sat there and read some of my students’ work. I wrote a haiku for my son. I tried to fill in the blanks in a story unfolding between the Frenchwoman sitting next me and the African man who was courting her. I listened to the conversation of the German couple on the other side of me, listened to the sound of their words only since comprehension of what they were saying was beyond me. I drank my wine slowly and savored the saucisson. I enjoyed the play of the late afternoon summer light on the Hausmannian buildings at the end of the street. And gradually I felt peace coming back into my soul.

I actually assign my students to go into a French café, alone, and spend at least half an hour there, writing about what they see and hear. I think it is an experience no one visiting Paris should miss. To me it is far more central to the experience of being in Paris than a visit to any one of its wonderful monuments or museums.

In a Parisian café you are surrounded by people, and by human stories. The people-watching and eavesdropping are superb, but so is the bubble of privacy that surrounds you, broken only if you want it to be, because of the respect for and maintenance of privacy the French are so famous for.

It really is a wonderful thing, to be in a Parisian café.

An hour and a half after I arrived there, I reluctantly folded my papers and packed up my bag. I paid l’addition, 3.70 Euros–a small price to pay for the restoration of one’s sanity–and strolled back to my room, a calmer, happier person, a person ready to once again embrace life in a spirit of joie de vivre, no matter what petty annoyances were thrown in my way.

Just one more reason why I love Paris.

There are many others: stay tuned!

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor and teacher of writing and literature based in Silver Spring, Maryland.  She teaches literature courses in Paris and Hawaii for the Education Abroad program at Queens College, CUNY, and twice a year she offersWriting from the Heart workshops in a beautiful little village in the Champagne region of France.

I don’t get to be here all that much–just a few times a year, when I come here to meet with my Writing from the Heart students, or to spend some time with my sons in the place I just call “paradise” for short.

Essoyes is a very typical little French village in many ways (which means that actually it is a very special kind of place). It also has some special claims to distinction, most notably as the village where Renoir loved to spend his summers for much of his life.

But today I want to focus on a couple of the ordinary things that are so special to me, the things that soothe my soul and inspire me every time I am here, and cause me to fall in love with Essoyes all over again.

First of all there is the sense of continuity that is so comforting. I first came here more than 30 years ago, and I have been drawn back here for a variety of reasons for all that time. In the first period, I came here often. Then there was a 16-year period when I was not able to come at all. When I came back then after such a long time, I harbored a secret fear that it would have changed a great deal in my absence.

I need not have feared. One of the things I love most about Essoyes is that, as in much of France, change happens, but it happens slowly and thoughtfully. There is not “progress” for the sake of progress, with no thought given to whether that “progress” will actually make things better or worse.

Along with recognition that change is both inevitable and good, there is recognition that respect for the past is also important. So change happens, but it does not happen haphazardly. It happens slowly, deliberately, and with respect for local and traditional aesthetics.

This time one of the things that is new is that the Petit Casino grocery that used to be on the corner in the main square in the center of town has now moved to a larger new building a short walk away, toward the edge of the village. Probably some villagers do not like this. My guess is that most of them do: certainly they are continuing to shop in the new store, which is run by the same kind, friendly grocer and his wife who ran the old store. “The new store is good for you?” I asked him today, not having seen him since before the new store opened. “It’s good for everyone,” he answered, smiling.

What is not new is the reliability of the lovely bells that ring out from the church on the hour, the quarter hour, the half hour, and the three-quarters hour, marking the passage of time, reminding villagers when the shops are about to close for lunch, when they will reopen again for the early evening hours, when it is time to go to bed, when it is time to get up again. Hearing those bells again makes me feel grounded in a way that is deeply comforting and feels quite simply, right.

What is also not new is the text carved into the stone wall of a building I walk by every day on my way to the village from our place. “Posée par Emile Barré, age 11 ans, 1 mai 1872″ it says on one of the stones. And every time I read it a little boy, aged 11 in 1872, remains alive for me in some kind of wonderful way. I don’t know what he looked like, or Essoyes looked like then, what private griefs or joys were his, how long he lived and whether his life was on the whole happy and successful, or not.

I do know that he lived, that he was a boy, a boy who lived in Essoyes; that on the first day of May in 1872 there was an important occasion, the construction of a building that would last well into the future; and that someone thought that this boy, and this day, were important enough to grant them this little piece of immortality, this connection between past and future.

There is more, so much more, to say about Essoyes. There will be more to come on another day.

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor and teacher of writing and literature based in Silver Spring, Maryland.  She teaches literature courses in Paris, Hawaii, and Cuba for the Education Abroad program at Queens College, CUNY, and twice a year she offers Writing from the Heart workshops in a beautiful little village in the Champagne region of France. You can read more of her work about France, about Paris, and about the Champagne region, at Bonjour Paris and Smithsonian.com.

The movement is, in the words of the mission statement of the American Writers Museum Foundation, “to establish the first national museum in the United States dedicated to engaging the public in celebrating American writers and exploring their influence on our history, our identity, our culture, and our daily lives.”

Like many great ideas, one of the most surprising things about this one is that such a museum doesn’t already exist. In fact, the way the idea came to Mr. O’Hagan was that he had returned to the U.S. from a visit to his native Ireland, where he had visited the Dublin Writers Museum. He started asking people where the American Writers Museum was and, when the only answer he got to his question was blank stares and puzzled looks, he decided to do something about it.

The somewhat astonishing fact is, that out of approximately 17,500 museums in this country, not a single one (yet) is devoted to a comprehensive overview of American writers, their work, and “their influence on our history, our identity, our culture, and our daily lives.”

So it is that an Irish immigrant began the movement to create an American Writers Museum. Another wonderful American story in the making!

That was a few years ago. What began with one man’s inspirational idea has grown rapidly under his expert leadership, and with his extraordinary commitment to it. The AWM Foundation, now a nonprofit organization with 501c3 status, has endorsements from a stellar list of leaders of the literary world, business, and government, as well as enthusiastic popular support. The search is underway for a location for the future museum: Chicago is the current front-runner but after a recent visit Mr. O’Hagan made to Minnesota, St. Paul officials are lobbying hard to be considered for the honor too. Other cities that would love to be home to such a museum are also under consideration.

Naturally, the AWM Foundation needs money, lots of it, in order to get this project off the ground. (The fact that Mr. O’Hagan has launched this effort in the middle of one of the worst recessions in recent history reminds me of Sylvia Beach going to Paris in the middle of World War I because she “wanted to study French literature.” Quixotic, perhaps, but also completely endearing: and the act of someone who truly loves literature!) Yet for all that, O’Hagan’s calm, matter-of-fact belief in the inevitably of the museum seems completely reasonable, and inspires confidence that indeed this great endeavor will succeed.

It’s an exciting time for anyone interested in such a museum to share their thoughts about where it should be, what (and who) should be in it, and what kinds of programs and exhibits you’d like to see when it’s built. You can fill out the AWM Foundation’s online survey here, sharing your thoughts about what you’d like to see in the American Writers Museum.

The AWM website has lots more information for those who would like to know more. The American Writers Foundation hopes you will visit, share your thoughts, join the movement, and spread the word!

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor and teacher of writing and literature based in Silver Spring, Maryland.  She teaches literature courses in Paris, Hawaii, and Cuba for the Education Abroad program at Queens College, CUNY, and twice a year she offers Writing from the Heart workshops in a beautiful little village in the Champagne region of France. She has enthusiastically joined the movement to create The American Writers Museum. You can follow her tweets for AWM here.

It’s a natural question, and I know that the people who ask it assume that the answer is going to be yes. So the challenge for me always is how to answer the question truthfully, succinctly, and in such a way that they are not disappointed. My answer is usually something on the order of, “Well, we do a little bit of that, yes. And I encourage the students to do it on their own if they like, according to their own interests. But mostly we are in the classroom together, talking about what they discover in the texts they’re reading. And how what they’re reading illuminates, deepens, enriches their own experience of Paris.”

Usually this answer is met with some form of polite confusion or even stunned disbelief. After all, if  “all we’re doing” is reading the books, couldn’t we do that anywhere?” (Yes, we could.) “So what would be the point of going to Paris and ‘just’ reading the books?” (Well. It turns out that reading books written about Paris in Paris is in fact a much richer experience, especially for people who have never been there, than it is reading those same books elsewhere.  What was a mere theory when I first created my course has now become a proven fact, observed through the lived experience of hundreds of my students.)

And though I do understand how natural the question is, I have always been just a bit perplexed as to why it is that many people assume the most interesting thing we could do in Paris is to go and stare at the outsides of windows out of which famous writers once stared into a Paris that has changed significantly since they were there looking out. Or to go into the bars and bistros they made famous, to pay for overpriced drinks and be surrounded by other tourists doing the same thing.

I have always felt that the advantage of being in Paris to study the works of expatriate writers who have lived there is to read their words while living in the same city they were writing about. And to allow the words themselves to inspire thought, action, a more fascinating exploration of a changing, but endlessly fascinating city.

A new book just published, A Skeptic’s Guide to Writer’s Houses by Anne Trubek, a professor of English at Oberlin College, examines the phenomenon of writers’ homes that have been made into museums. Why do we visit writers homes in order to feel close to writers?  Trubek wonders, in this very well-written and thought-provoking book. Why don’t we just read their books?

Trubek began her search for an answer to these questions as a Ph.D. student in 1991, at the Walt Whitman House in Camden, New Jersey. “I decided to go to Camden to expose not simply Whitman’s house, but all of the writers’ house museums as the frauds I believed them to be,” she says. Though setting out in a very skeptical state of mind and remaining somewhat skeptical to the end, Trubek’s openness to learning and growing, and to changing her mind along the way, cause her to come up with conclusions that are much more complex, nuanced, and interesting than the one she set out to prove.  “I believe, still, that a house is often not the best way to honor the life and work of a writer,” she writes. “But I no longer scoff at those who do want to build them…We pick and choose our stories. The ones we want to hear offer us something we need to hear, be it solace, support or a cautionary tale.”

Trubek tells many wonderful stories, and poses a number of interesting questions in her book, but to me the most interesting and the central one is summed up when, after years of visiting the small museums that struggle to attract visitors, to pay the crushing costs of maintenance, to sustain themselves financially, she asks someone engaged in the daunting prospect of raising funds to restore a dilapidated house Langston Hughes once lived in in Cleveland. “Why not redirect our energy to reading Hughes rather than restoring his house?” she asks.

It’s similar to the way I have felt every time someone asked me if what I do in Paris with my students is show them the places writers have been. To me it has always been pretty obvious that to visit the locations where writers have been is not the best way to feel close to those writers. To me the best way to feel close to writers is to read their work.

Granted, with the right storyteller as guide, the writers can come alive again in house tours, as Trubek discovered. (The best guides, she found, not surprisingly, were the ones who incorporated the author’s own words into their tours, the ones who made those words, and through the words, the authors too, come alive for their listeners.) In literary tours as in literature itself, the skill of the storyteller is crucial.

For it is through the power of words, not buildings or stones, bistros or bars, that writers create their connections to the world. Ironically, sometimes the absence of a building can be more moving than the presence of one. Trubek discovered this as she and other visitors stared at the charred ruins of a dream house Jack London had built on his California ranch, but that was destroyed in a fire before he ever had the chance to live in it.  Another writer’s home she visited was being kept in a state officially described as “arrested decay” rather than being brought back to a pristine and picturesque approximation of what might have once been.  “I prefer burnt stones and arrested decay to fake manuscripts on borrowed desks,” Trubek concludes.

I have very little time with my students in Paris, just a month. In the time we are there I try to help them dig deeply into the words the writers wrote about a Paris that is now gone forever, because it is in the past. And then to use the insights and wisdom the writers we are reading have shared to enrich their own experience of a Paris that is still very much alive, waiting just outside their doors.

That Paris has changed a great deal from the days when Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton and Langston Hughes were there. But it is still enduringly Parisian, enduringly French, and an enduringly fascinating place.

Also, much has not changed. And sharp-eyed writers from Edith Wharton to David Sedaris have captured these things, and committed them to paper, along with their own unique insights into France and the French.

Words, especially the words written by great writers, have the power to deepen and enrich our experience of fascinating places, as well as to transform lives. And so what I do with my students in Paris is to focus, mostly, on writers’ words.

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor and teacher of writing and literature based in Silver Spring, Maryland.  She teaches literature courses in Paris and Hawaii for the Education Abroad program at Queens College, CUNY, and twice a year she offers Writing from the Heart workshops in a beautiful little village in the Champagne region of France. She recommends Paris-Walks for some wonderful walking tours of Paris, including a Hemingway walk given each Friday morning.

*Originally called “Paris through the Eyes of Travelers.”

“It said that there was a chance.”

“What kind of chance?”

“A slim chance but still a chance.”  (Suicide in B-flat)

While I have not done much thinking about Sam Shepard since I wrote my master’s thesis on his work in 1988 and I haven’t been able to see any of his plays since then, when asked “What writer’s work most deftly captivates you?” his was the name that sprang instantly to my mind.

It’s a bit difficult to explain why. This is partly because most of his work is written for the theater: and while it can hold its own as poetry on the page, it’s very difficult to pluck discrete passages out of context and have them evoke the full and incredibly powerful impact they have when delivered on stage, and in context.

I guess the main reason I love Shepard’s work is that he more than any other writer I know has so deftly captured–in powerful, spare, poetic prose written for the theater–the dreadful state of alienation, isolation, and decay of American society in the latter part of the 20th century.  (“You’d think in a nation this big there’d be someone to talk to” is a representative line that captures so much in so few words.)

His work is dark, but there is a glimmer of hope in the center of the darkness.  As one critic, Edwin Wilson wrote,  “There have always been two kinds of writers who dwell on the negative aspects of life. One is nihilistic. The other cares passionately about a way of life he considers worthwhile. When it is threatened, he laments the loss in the strongest possible terms…Mr. Shepard appears to fall into this category…Though he does not state it directly, [his]…plays offer a stern, almost desperate warning. Unless we restore the integrity of the family, unless we renew our spirit, unless we respect the land, the American dream will fail.”

“A slim chance, but a chance,” you might say.

That is what the music of Sam Shepard’s poetic prose says to me. That things are pretty bad, but there’s a chance they could get better.

And he has been able to boil all this down to a line.

So many other lines in his work equally deftly capture and characterize–or more precisely, nail–American life at the end of the twentieth century. And–because he is American after all–there’s still a ray of hope about it all.

That is why his work so captivates me.

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor and teacher of writing and literature based in Silver Spring, Maryland.  She teaches literature courses in Paris and Hawaii for the Education Abroad program at Queens College, CUNY, and twice a year she offers Writing from the Heart workshops in a beautiful little village in the Champagne region of France.

This is my favorite quote about words.

Eden is a young African-American woman who has come to Paris, following the trail of her literary heroes, James Baldwin and Langston Hughes.

Black Girl in Paris is the story of Eden’s journey to become a writer, and most especially her hard-won discovery that she holds the power to create her own destiny within herself.

I don’t think it’s giving away too much to say that these words come toward the end of the book.

But I think I will suggest that you read the book if you want to know why I love this quote.

It’s a very fine book indeed. Well worth reading.

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor and teacher of writing and literature based in Silver Spring, Maryland.  She teaches literature courses in Paris and Hawaii for the Education Abroad program at Queens College, CUNY, and twice a year she offers Writing from the Heart workshops in a beautiful little village in the Champagne region of France.

I believe these words, penned by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, more than any other words, have changed the course of human history.

Imperfect as our democracy is,  it was and is founded on these words. I can think of no other words that have been as inspiring, or that have brought about greater change in the world.  (“Love your neighbor as yourself” might have been even more earth-shattering had the words been heeded and followed. But guess what, except in the case of a handful of truly saintly people, they never were, and have not been to this day!)

But the words of Jefferson, perhaps because they were offered in a political, not a religious context, have had a phenomenal effect on the course of not only U.S. history, but the history of the world.

They have inspired not only many of the greatest speeches in our country’s history–some of them also very powerful in inspiring forward movement–but have inspired people around the world to take the words “all men are created equal” literally, to heart, and into action.

I don’t believe for a minute that even Thomas Jefferson, brilliant as he was, could have seen what momentous changes these words would eventually bring about. His world was too different from ours; I don’t think anyone’s imagination could have stretched that far in that time.

Whenever the question occurs, “Is there really power in the pen?” these are the words that come to my mind.

For they are the words that inspired a fundamental change in the course of human history–a world in which the prerogatives granted by privilege and class would no longer be seen as inevitable. Where people would actually believe that all men are created equal, and that there are certain rights we all deserve to have.

We haven’t gotten to the fulfillment of this promise yet. We’re not even close. But we are clearly heading in that direction, and I think we owe a lot to Jefferson, to his powerful vision of equality, and to the promise offered in his words, a promise that is still unfolding.

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor and teacher of writing and literature based in Silver Spring, Maryland.  She teaches literature courses in Paris and Hawaii for the Education Abroad program at Queens College, CUNY, and twice a year she offers Writing from the Heart workshops in a beautiful little village in the Champagne region of France.

This may not be a characteristic of all writers, but I think that it is probably true of  most, whether they write fiction or nonfiction.

Certainly the best nonfiction writers are experts at using anecdote and other elements of storytelling to say what they want to say. There’s a good reason for that: people love stories (and they have ever since they were hardly even people at all yet, hunched by campfires, clothed in animal skins).

They listen more carefully, they enjoy listening, and they understand and remember things better when writers use stories to capture their attention and feed their imagination, to illustrate the concepts they’re expressing.

In many ways our culture is not a very friendly one for storytellers. “You’ve already told me that,” my kids used to say when I would begin to launch into one of my favorite family stories or—as one of my sons has correctly pointed out—sometimes merely anecdotes. I had to actively teach them that having heard something once before is no reason not to hear it again, especially when it comes to a good story. Good stories bear telling and retelling, often, a fact that was understood by most people in most cultures throughout human history until relatively recently, but seems to be slipping away for us.

A pity!

For storytelling is not about conveying information. Storytelling is about the joy of entering a world created by the storyteller, a world that can be entered as many times as the story is told well. It is about conveying nuances of character, repeating delightful turns of phrase, recounting surprising turns of events in such a way that they can feel almost surprising all over again, each and every time you hear them. Storytelling is about coming once again to your favorite part and experiencing the pleasure of having it make you smile, or laugh, or sigh, or nod, all over again, in recognition of the deep truths that lie within the tale.

It doesn’t take very much to tell a good story. All you need is an engaged and engaging storyteller, a receptive listener, and a belief that appreciating life in all its splendor, as well as in all of its quirky details, is worth the investment of a little time. A little time spent listening.

Similarly, I believe that every person’s life story is worth telling. I believe that you don’t have to have had an unusual life, or to be particularly accomplished in any way in order to have a story worth telling. You just have to know how to open your heart and tell your listeners—or readers—who you are. What you think is funny. What you like, admire, detest or despise, about the people you know. How the world seems to you. What it has been like to be watching the human parade through your eyes.

That’s really all it takes.

I call it “writing from the heart.” And believing in the value of writing from the heart works wonders. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor and teacher of writing and literature based in Silver Spring, Maryland.  She teaches literature courses in Paris and Hawaii for the Education Abroad program at Queens College, CUNY, and twice a year she offers Writing from the Heart workshops in a beautiful little village in the Champagne region of France.  In the spring of 2011, the first Writing from the Heart (in the Heart of Maryland) will be offered.