Why Stories?

Meta-Narrative #1 – “The Spear Cuts Through Water”

This post is for a class about the future of writing in the death of the print era. With the advent of the digital age and then the context of LLMs like ChatGPT, where do I, as a writer, fit in? Now, I know what you’re thinking, so let me stop you: “What does any of this have to do with Simon Jimenez’s fantasy masterpiece The Spear Cuts Through Water?” We’ll get there in a moment, but let me spin you a tale first.

In September of 2024 I’d just begun my second year of college. My first year was a complete mess, and I came out with three-ish failed classes and a new major: Professional Writing. In the context of this class there’s a twisted irony to be found. I only had a passing interest in LLMs as a Computer Engineering Major who wanted to work in the VR industry, but Meta -the largest VR company- kept shoving then in my face. Now, as a writer, I somehow find myself in a similar predicament. I digress.

September 2024. My relationship with school was at the healthiest it’s ever been at, and it’s thanks in no small part to reading. I was hyperlexic as a child; I started reading early and progressed at blazing speeds; I was a precocious little twerp with three books in each hand. As an adult, I still consider myself something close to hyperlexic, but I hadn’t read much since high school. At least, not until summer 2024. By September, I was ready to try something to prove it. Two weeks. Eight books. I prepared my first book log. I breezed through the first 4, well on pace to hit 8 before the end of the two weeks. But then school began going wrong. Disastrously wrong. I decided two months was more realistic than two weeks, given the circumstances. A month later I’d only read 6 books out of 8, and I was trying to completely withdrawal from the semester and nullify my grades. Two more months, now December. Still only 6 books finished. In fact, I hadn’t even started the 7th book, a supposedly brilliant bit of meta-fiction by Simon Jimenez, The Spear Cuts Through Water. Another month passed. It’s now January, and we’ve arrived.

The purpose of this assignment is to introduce myself and set the tone of this blog in the coming months, so I’ll do that now.

Hello! My name is Coen Snook, though I more commonly go by Coen Daniel. I am queer and nonbinary, feel free to use any pronouns you like when referring to me. I really, really, fervently, love storytelling. I am turning this assignment in barely on time, or perhaps a bit late, as is common for me, and I haven’t even started talking about the book I’m supposed to be reviewing, as is even more common for me. I felt I lacked direction for this blog coming into this assignment, despite this website being older than this class. See, I hinted at this earlier, but I only have a passing interest in LLMs. My real reason for taking this class is that I absolutely love meta-narratives. Writing about writing. Stories we tell about stories. Classes like this. So, in a bit of a meta move, I let myself go off on a tangent. This website is, ostensibly, a way for me to refine tangents. I could use that to search for a direction, at 10 pm on Monday, too close to the deadline. I found my direction in the 7th and 8th books I had recently finished from a long-abandoned book log. There was another problem, of course. Those books had nothing to do with LLMs or AI. Nothing to do with this class.

Except, The Spear Cuts Through Water is, much like this class, a meta-narrative. It is a story about stories, about how we tell them and why. It’s midnight Tuesday as I’m writing this, which makes this assignment late. I suppose I should go ahead and write the damn book review already.

The Spear Cuts Through Water is the most important book I’ve read in years. Two years, to be precise. A fantasy epic that is truly unique; its world, magic system, set of characters, and framing were all novel to me. Yet -and I can say with confidence that this is intentional- there is a palpable familiarity to it all. You know these stories. Yes, I mean you know them. You are the focus character of this book. It is your lola who told you a version of these stories as a child, and it is you who holds a spear in the inverted theater, where the spirits of the greatest performance hold their timeless play. The story is an homage to oral storytelling and to theater. Two artforms that are dying in the book, and in real life. And you get to witness their swan song. It plays with point of view, with perspective, like nothing I’ve ever read. The action is gruesome and incredible, the stakes somehow convincingly high as early as the first moment that the theater begins its show. This is a story of dead gods and dying kings, dead storytellers and dying artforms. Loss and sacrifice, power and politics. But don’t be fooled. It is indeed a love story. Down to the blade-dented bone.

The class I’m taking is called: “Why Write?” But I would like to ask another question. A question from The Spear Cuts Through Water. Why Stories? Why stories about stories? Why writing classes about writing? Why engage in a dying artform? Why sit and listen to your lola tell you about the Inverted Theater? Or to a professor tell you about The Canterbury Tales? The The Spear Cuts Through Water did not give me answers to these questions. It did, however, give me a reason to write this assignment. “Why Write? Why Stories?” Because The Spear Cuts Through Water was phenomenal. That’s enough for now.

Which leads me to my conclusion, which is fittingly a bit of a tangent in its own right. This blog is about refining tangents, turning trains of thought like that which you’ve just witnessed into dense, meaningful nuggets of information which people would actually want to read, rather than huge rambles full of endless musing. I feel that I have failed in that regard, just as I failed to turn this assignment in on time. But perhaps that, too, is a reason to write. I hope to look back on this meta-blog about meta-narratives and smile at how far I’ve come, able to answer “Why Stories?” with confidence and concision. But for now, I write -I tell stories- because I’m not there yet.