The Story of the Story

The story of the story is seldom written.

I don’t mean Steven Pressfield’s this is how I structured The Legend of Bagger Vance story. Or Stephen King’s this is what I do and if you want to be a writer you need to do it too story. Or Anne Lamott’s take your characters out to coffee and write down what they tell you story. I don’t even mean Bob Dylan’s I played a few notes on the piano and three minutes later “Like A Rolling Stone” was written story.

I am referring to the story behind the published story. The story that involves an inbox of rejection emails and auto-consolations from queried agents. Who wants to read a story like that? “Then I got rejected from the The Paris Review. So I kept writing. Then I got rejected from The Atlantic. So I kept writing.”

The most recent untold publication story I read was in David Sedaris’ book, When Engulfed In Flames. In “What I learned,” Sedaris takes a creative trip back to his Princeton days and links them to his calling as a non-fiction humorist:

See what I mean? The story behind the creation of his craft is interesting. It is…

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