I judge my stories as “good” when they have a reader. It moves to “better” when the story affects someone, then all the way to “best” when a reader takes action and creates their own story. My 16 year-old grandson took my 70 year-old experience and moved it into his life. Then he pondered what it meant and how it would shape the stories he would tell his grandchildren …
Storytelling
Untangling A Lifetime Of Bird’s Nests
At age eight, my bait casting reel would always end up in a knotty mess. Dad called them “bird’s nests” because the tangled interlacing of fishing line looked like the complicated weave of its namesake. I have a lifetime of creating knots. Not all the same. Neither are the ways to untie them, but the arc is always there. I create the mess and then help comes to my rescue …
Good Listeners Make Better Storytellers
Better storytelling can be traced to good listening, and as Willa Sibert Cather, the novelist who wrote so vividly about frontier life on the Great Plains tells us, it all begins at an early age. Willa’s belief reminds me of Corey, a toddler who grew into a man at a small nursing home his parents operated in Charlotte. Hillcrest Manor was Corey’s entire world until he started preschool …
We’re Losing Enough Stories To Fill A Library – Every Day
I read the obituaries. Not everyday, but often. Sometimes I know the person and plan to attend their service. Sometimes an obit celebrates a stranger. It doesn’t matter, as a storyteller myself, I enjoy reading about these people and learning something about their lives.
Storytellers are the Best Teachers
Like all great teachers, the disheveled Dr. William E. Parish was a storyteller. On the first day of each semester he gave us the rules. “You can buy the text, even read it if you want, but the exam questions will be from my lectures – attend class, take notes, and you will have all you need for a good grade.”