Don’t Call Me A Storyteller

Now that the fucking "conversation" is finally dead and buried, the marketing industry has a new maddening cliché — "storytelling."

I hate it.

I was hoping if I ignored it long enough it would just go away. But it hasn’t. It is metastisizing.

I’m not a fucking storyteller, I’m a writer.

Calling me a storyteller is an insult. I don’t like the sound of it. It’s too cute. It’s too easy. It’s too comfortable.

Storytelling is what babysitters, drunks, substitute teachers and recalcitrant teenagers do.

Even if I write stories, I don’t like being called a storyteller. Shakespeare wrote stories, but he wasn’t a fucking storyteller. He was a writer.

Yeah, I know. I’m not exactly Shakespeare. That's not the point.

Writing at any level is hard work. Don’t believe me? Try writing something new every day for a week and posting it and see if anyone reads it.

Storytelling is easy. Writing is hard.

Being a writer may make you a storyteller, but being a storyteller doesn’t make you a writer.