I am reminded of Pratchett and co's ideas on narrativium, which I apparently imbibed and internalized early enough that it has made me one of these life-writers.
"We are not Homo sapiens, Wise Man. We are the third chimpanzee. What distinguishes us from the ordinary chimpanzee Pan troglodytes and the bonobo chimpanzee Pan paniscus, is something far more subtle than our enormous brain, three times as large as theirs in proportion to body weight. It is what that brain makes possible. And the most significant contribution that our large brain made to our approach to the universe was to endow us with the power of story. We are Pan narrans, the storytelling ape. (II: 325)
...if you understand the power of story, and learn to detect abuses of it, you might actually deserve the appellation Homo sapiens."
"We are not Homo sapiens, Wise Man. We are the third chimpanzee. What distinguishes us from the ordinary chimpanzee Pan troglodytes and the bonobo chimpanzee Pan paniscus, is something far more subtle than our enormous brain, three times as large as theirs in proportion to body weight. It is what that brain makes possible. And the most significant contribution that our large brain made to our approach to the universe was to endow us with the power of story. We are Pan narrans, the storytelling ape. (II: 325)
...if you understand the power of story, and learn to detect abuses of it, you might actually deserve the appellation Homo sapiens."
http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Narrativium