Who lives, who dies, who tells your story

The iconic song that concludes Hamilton, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story,” elicits a fundamental inspiration for creativity—the idea of sonder, that each individual is living a life as complex and intricate as our own. I myself wonder whether or not my stories will matter, and marvel at the vast number of narratives to which I will never have access. I fantasize about capturing an emotion that others have experienced but could not decipher. I imagine my words, tugging the soft skin of a cheek into a smile. The first time I saw Hamilton, the play moved me to tears; hearing the amalgamation of powerful instruments and voices, in the name of storytelling, reconnected me with the power of the written word.
This anecdote represents a common sentiment among aspiring 21st-century writers. While the dream of one day publishing—or even creating a finished work at all—floats at the forefront of writers’ thoughts, the reality is far from encouraging. In 2012, bibliographic information provider R. R. Bowker calculated the publication of 2,352,797 books in the United States alone, with 49,553 of them being fiction. This value does not include books published online, nor written song lyrics, nor blog posts.
With so many writers constantly at work, distinguishing between their works and styles might seem challenging. However, each author comes from a different background and approaches the same task from a different angle. Ultimately, each writer has a different story to tell, and a unique way of telling it.
“The connected impulses to understand my own thoughts by entering into a strange sort of conversation with the page, and the desire to tell stories to an audience [initially made me write],” Naben Ruthnum, who received his Masters degree in English Literature at McGill in 2011, wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. Ruthnum’s novella, Cinema Rex, won both The Malahat Review’s 2012 Novella Contest, as well as the 2013 Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Now, the author writes fiction professionally.