Cloud Cuckoo Land By Anthony Doerr: Storytelling You Can Trust.

Mariam Nooristani

Cloud Cuckoo Land 🔗

Let us begin with something easily forgotten when reading, trust. There are unconscious gestures at play when we decide to read something new. For instance, picking up a book is an act of openness and discovery. Purchasing the book means financial commitment. Setting aside time to read is a time commitment. Yet the grandest gesture the reader can bestow an author or book is trust. Authors invite us into their narratives and ask us to trust them to tell a complete story. Sometimes to trust the author we have to understand the purpose of the narrative.

At the annual Writers Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University, I sat ready to hear about author Anthony Doerr and his writing process. To my surprise, Doerr’s process was not different from mine and other writers’. 

When asked, why do you write? He talked about his childhood and expressed his love of nature and infinite respect for its beauty. He made apparent his interests in exploration and learning. 

When asked what he found difficult about writing? He used the metaphor of a bonsai tree and rainforest. The bonsai tree represents the writer’s attention to detail in the story. The rainforest is the greater narrative of the story. He states that it can be hard as an author to give both these worlds equal attention but that you must. Tending to the bonsai and the rainforest makes for a more well-rounded narrative.

When asked, where do you get your ideas? Roughly put, he begins with what he does not know, suggesting that looking to the unknown will open up the writer in you. The learning process gives the writer the momentum needed to finish a novel. 

You might be thinking about conventional advice that tells us to write what we know. Remember no single method or technique is guaranteed to work. What Doerr is suggesting can seem a little scary. But if curiosity is the mother of all invention, it can also be the beginning of a story worth telling. Learning new concepts will allow the writer in you to grow into a storyteller untethered from the familiar themes of life we see repeated in much of writing today. Take his advice, begin with discovery and become a writer willing to learn. 

At the symposium Doerr asked his audience to trust him while reading Cloud Cuckoo Land and to remember that the purpose of his story and characters are to illustrate the connection we all have to each other through space and time. Your trust will not be misplaced. Cloud Cuckoo Land is a one-of-a-kind production that will dazzle your imagination. Doerr is an author you can trust from beginning to end.

Cloud Cuckoo Land 🔗