…the most crippling disease of our time: the same four stories flattened out and told over and over… how to steal; how to kill; how to diminish; how to live dead whilst alive. The periodic tables are more captivating.
A great soul, a great storyteller, has a life lit by a winged thing … one which rustles, throws off flashes of lightning when sensing treasure … a sudden thought, an abrupt intuition, whilst passing over any unmapped mountain range… and holds to those flashes, does not ignore the pull to fly closer, to prospect.
Refuse to submit to anyone who insists we ought understand the entire world as though it is merely a shopping list… to be copied from week to week. The mystery. Hold to the mystery. Mystery is Imagination’s most ancient name.
In making your story, tell whomsoever will listen, in your own way, and with love … then tell them again: Story that lasts is a Fire that flows from anything in us that is Eternal.
Painting of Firebird and Carpet is the cover for the forthcoming Creative Fire book by C. P. Estés
excerpt from ms The Storyteller’s Bible for Filmmakers, Animators, Writers, Artists, Gamers and Inspirators, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, ©1970, and The Creative Fire: A Manifesto on Living A Life of Creativity, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, ©2009, All Rights Reserved.
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AfterMidnight Writer...Underground Writings of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés 