Possessed at the approach

"A friend of mine, at the beginning of his teaching career, was faced with teaching a 'creative writing' course to students of very limited literary experience. One of his devices was to give them a Grimm fairy tale and tell them to displace it, turning it into a plausible story in which every detail of the original world be accounted for." (Frye, 69)

Since the beginning of these classes I've been obsessed over this 'sea of stories' concept. There is a sea of stories from which we may partake, and each sip tastes different, a unique sedimentary flavoring. Surely we've all heard one story from two different people [who may or may not know one another], although individual storytelling ability [and stories themselves] cannot be duplicated. A story is a momentous occasion because much of the story is unconventional in and of a specific rendition. Uniqueness is embedded within individual interpretation and such such features of communication as nuance, emphasis, abridging, addition, etc. These variables are all essential when composing a story and, according to the brief meat and potatoes of the argument, denies the ability to precisely recreate any story. In this case, to recreate a story's unique nature is to duplicate a storyteller altogether; and this is what I feel is our theme when telling our displaced fairy tale. What's funny is it feels like my classes are overlapping, as all stories do. It's like they're sharing the same sea, but each course leaves a similar salty residue on the tip of my tongue. Traces of heard, word-of-mouth remembrances come out in every class, but the quote above really got me thinking. This is me, I'm in a fiction 'creative writing' class so I assume the role as the student 'of very limited literary experience.' There's also the fact that I sometimes lose sense for each of my classes from feeling in that sometimes they overlap because they are ultimately and intimately associated. Class stories, lessons, mantras, etc. routinely complement everyday life whether in class or not, yet when I have to catalogue what I've learned then that information inevitably indistinguishable. Subject matter to comprehension is as the senses to synesthesia. It all bundles and blends together. Like...those who hear my voice on paper get a taste of what I feel, sniffing out the intended vision and eat up what I'm saying; or I'm just talking out of my ass. Nevermore, now for the sake of argument, if I used the story [from the previous blog] without edit and turned it into creative fiction class then my professor would love it. The problem is that the story is inadequate for our class on romance, the one in which the assignment was given. The story's not written right, it's too romantic and needs less of what I'll call 'beauty beef.' Don't: rewrite the taste of the sipping pond by dipping your roots drooling of organic fuel despite admitting to it's soiling from pissing in the pool. Do: write a realistic story. Leave the narrative bare-boned; it'll go 'he said, she said,' and contain very little of 'he saw, she saw.' As derived from Frye and said in class, get rid of that 'fairy tale language.' That's where the quote above applies, because this sounds like an assignment for the wrong class. Yet, maybe it's the exact assignment I need to get my fundamental storytelling down and facts straight. That's where the remnants of another oral traditions course will aid; placing everything in sequence. What I've come to understand is this displaced story should try to sound like the others' in class. So my goal is to adapt a story that anybody else could conjure, but come showtime I'm going to let the story speak for itself. When it comes down to it I'll expect the audience to recognize a story's origin yet let the language separate itself from the sea we share.