We are story animals.

It’s scribbled somewhere in the spirals of our DNA. Some trait we evolved—I think we forced ourselves to encode it there, to learn, to yearn to share. It is like a sound that we feel, but it cannot escapes except through new stories we must create. For me it happens when I learn something, when I actually come to understand a concept. Something passes from teacher or writer to me, and that sound begins to build there at the back of my head trying to escape…no not escape and leave me, but to seek out another mind to cross to. I have received some token, some spark—It is my responsibility to push it forward to new minds so it doesn’t wither and die like my biological form must do.

Of course, not all stories have a creature like this hiding in their narrative, but some do, sometimes the simplest ones.

And writing—unlike storytelling from memory like a Shaman from our deep past relied upon—allows these ideas to lie dormant…waiting. Not for one lifespan, or even ten lifespans, they have the opportunity to endure.