Stop Writing Your Story and Let It Write You

Most of us carry a story we think we want to tell. We’ve rehearsed it, polished it, decided which parts matter and which can be trimmed. We know the angle we want to hit and the impression we want to leave. But filmmaker Nic Askew, who has spent decades sitting across from thousands of people as a witness to their narratives, suggests we’ve been approaching this backward.

There’s a fork in the road where stories begin, Askew explains. One path is the calculating mind — the part of us that crafts a message *to* someone else, angling for connection, approval, or advantage. The other is something deeper, quieter, and far harder to access: the source that speaks *through* us once we’ve set all that strategic thinking aside. In his work, Askew invites people to approach the camera with nothing prepared, no performance planned. Just emptiness. Just listening. Start with nothing, he tells them. No act on your part. Wait for experience to find you. For this moment, let yourself be undone and speak from what remains. Trust the field. Trust life itself.

What emerges from that stillness is categorically different from the story we would have chosen. It’s not more polished or more persuasive. It’s true in a way that our calculated versions rarely are. And that’s the provocation at the heart of his work: We’re not really the writer of our stories. We’re the page on which a story is written. This isn’t a call for passivity or surrender to fate. It’s something more nuanced — a practice of listening so complete, so subtle, that the authentic material beneath our defenses finally has room to surface. When we stop managing the narrative, something more honest gets a chance to speak.

The shift isn’t easy. We’re trained from childhood to curate ourselves, to lead with our strengths and hide our confusion. But consider what happens if you trade that control for genuine stillness, even for just a moment. Set down what you want to prove or get. Ask instead: What wants to come through here? Notice what changes in what you say, how you listen, and how the other person responds. You might discover that the story worth telling was never the one you planned.