Reena’s Exploration Challenge #135 — Listen Twice

“Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear,” by Vincent VanGogh

I’m about halfway through Chuck Palahniuk’s new book, “Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything was Different,” and the prompt phrase today reminds me of something Chuck says in it. In the section, Establishing Authority: Your Storytelling Context, he says,

Context and source are more important now than they’ve ever been. So if you were my student, I’d ask you, “Who’s telling this? Where are they telling it? And why are they telling it?”
Palahniuk, Chuck. Consider This (p. 40). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

There is no way to separate the writer from the story. It would be akin to looking at the self-portrait by VanGogh where he is missing his ear and not wondering what the story behind it was.

Everyone is selling something. In the writer’s case, it is a personalized point of view. If…