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Guess Who Seth Godin Calls “The Best Storytellers” #365StrongStories 21
“Who are the best storytellers?” After a serious binge on this particular podcast, I knew this was the host’s pet question. As ever, he indicated to the guest that he wanted a “creative” answer that would challenge the assertion that marketers are the greatest storytellers. (Only on a marketing podcast does anyone assume “marketers are the best storytellers” is the most interesting answer).
Seth Godin, the man behind All Marketers are Storytellers and so many other brilliant books, broke the mold (as usual). According to Mr. Godin, the best storytellers are:
Mothers.
The host spluttered. He dissolved into nervous laughter. He tried to explain Seth’s answer for him and talk about how mothers are empathetic and caring. Then he trailed off about how he wasn’t going to get all “soft and fuzzy.”
Seth didn’t go there. Instead, he described mothers as people who devote 15 to 20 years crafting a human being. They don’t use tools or hacks learned at a conference. They merely set standard and live a life that leaves a story behind.
On behalf of the mothers out there - those of us who know we’re storytellers and those of us who haven’t discovered that yet - I thank you Mr. Godin, from the bottom of my maternal but not-so-soft-and-fuzzy heart.
The greatest story you’ll ever tell is the story that you live and devote to someone else. This is the foundation of my approach to telling stories that connect.
The Gift of the First Reader, #365Strong Stories 20
Story has been trying to find me all day, but I’m too tired to draw together myself together and let narrative arrange my scattered pieces. And so, I flip through the books that crowd my office couch hoping someone else’s words can conjure the magic that eludes me.
Just don’t pretend to know more about your characters than they do, because you don’t. Stay open to them. It’s teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It’s that simple.
My copy of Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird was a used one, apparently. It’s so easy to lose track of how books find us these days. Generally, it’s enough that they find us at all. The harder thing is finding time for them, of course.
The pen that underlined that passage was black and inky, just like mine. I assumed the marks were my own until I noticed how straight the lines were. When juggling a nursing child or reading in bed by flashlight, all a mother can hope for are bold zigzags that don’t obscure the text too much.
And as exhaustion-warped as my memory is, I know I’ve never read that paragraph. A stranger had absorbed this book and let it go long before it made its way to me.
These days, I have little time for characters. My writing is focused on the “you” of the reader and the “I” that strives to tell good stories.
I do, however, try to make as many tea parties as I can. And I am as kind as I can be to the dolls at the table, and under the table, and even those who gouge the small of my back when I roll on them in the night.
Tonight, when I’m too weary to be the writer, I can be grateful for Lamott’s story and the book’s mysterious first owner for teaching me to be a better mama.
The iPad Time Machine, #365StrongStories 19
Must. Download. All. The. Ebooks.
You’ve been in this click-happy place. Perhaps when you’re feeling vulnerable in about your parenting skills or the size of your email list?
A few years ago, when “oooh! free stuff on the internet!” was cool and noteworthy, many of us were guilty of sacrificing our Gmail addresses for a dozen reports a day. (We didn’t realize we were paving the way for the billion dollar data storage industry, but I digress.)
At our house, the antiquated iPad is now streaked with tiny fingerprints, but it used to be the storehouse for all my entrepreneurial dreams. I imagined I would absorb all that material and suddenly awake to find that I too had broken the six figure barrier! You can guess how that’s worked out for me…
Anyway, when I was searching for an ebook to keep the kids interested in the car this weekend (I was in one of those moods when an app or a tv show would be proof I was failing as a parent), I stepped into the iPad time machine.
And I discovered storytelling. PDF after PDF about storytelling and business. Thing is, I don’t remember being particularly interested in storytelling back in 2012. I certainly don’t remember shunting any of those docs onto the iPad for future inspiration.
Though I’ve always been a writer who loved to immerse herself in fiction, “storyteller” felt too big. I hadn’t finished a novel, after all. That wasn’t what was holding me back from diving into storytelling though. It was something much more personal and painful:
I didn’t know, like, or trust my own story enough to believe it was worth telling. I was judging my ability to be a storyteller because I had passed harsh judgment on my own story.
In the last few years, I’ve come to believe that everyone is a storyteller. I know that stories are what enable us to make sense of our lives.
And I’ve had a chance to heal and fall in love with my own story too.
Finally, I’ve come to understand that my work is to help emerging thought leaders explore, own, and tell the stories that will change lives.
Because a good story comes full circle, this one does too. I've written my own ebook on storytelling.
This isn't some relic created in 2012: it has been crafted for this moment in time and crafted for you, the emerging thought leader who doesn’t have years to waste on fears that your stories aren't worthy.
Download it now and read it now. Your 2019 self will thank you for it!
The Story You Have the Right to Tell, #365StrongStories 18
The words had stuck in the storyteller’s throat, and so she went to her teacher for counsel. “They have asked me to tell a story at the Celebration of Kindness and Justice. They wish me to speak for those who have suffered.”
Her mentor was wrapped in furs and cradled a steaming cup. “An honor to be sure, dear one.”
“Not an honor I sought!” I have no stories to tell. Give me one, please, Teacher. You saw what it was like. You know what I must say.”
“Saw what it was like?” the old woman’s husk of a voice cracked. “My father ran the ships that carried them. I saw what it was like to be a spoiled rich girl. I saw what it was like to hate the freedom fighters and to consider emancipation a betrayal of divine right!”
“But you don’t believe that now, of course!”
“I don’t have the right to any beliefs at all. I lie in my bed and pay the granddaughter of the woman I once owned to bring me my every meal and wash my crumbling flesh. I’m too old to wonder how the story has changed.”
Our storyteller learned her craft from this elder - all the myths and the sagas and the legends that had built their little country. It was true, teacher and student rarely discussed what went on in the marketplace or spoke of rumors from the castle or across the sea. But the storyteller had learned that every tale had to speak to the joys and sorrows of the day. How had her teacher forgotten?
“The story that ends the forgetting,” she said as she rose. She could not leave the dark chambers fast enough now that she realized what she had to say. “Thank you, dear teacher. I must go!” She would not spin a tale that was not hers, but she would use her moment at the center of the circle to invite in the people who had lived and earned the right to tell it.
Winter Called: It's Coming, #365StrongStories 17
The wise have long been counseling the headstrong heroes. Warriors have fallen with a final warning on their lips:
Winter is coming.
Of course, Game of Thrones viewers have known something nasty was on its way. Over several seasons, we’ve watched the threat from the North take shape. All that stands between the innocent citizenry and zombie army is one last great wall.
Today, the leadership at our house got the call: Winter is coming this way too.
“I want a cell phone! Kids at school have them!”
(You can try to imagine that this was gently and logically delivered, but you’d be living in a fantasy world more mystical than Westeros.)
Everyone who watches plugged-in parents of small children have seen this coming. Technical forces whose power we don’t completely understand have us under siege. And they’re coming for our kids.
We’d been warned. We’d been talking about how we’d prepare. But there was always a more immediate dragon to slay and we assumed winter wouldn’t come to us ‘til she at least knew her multiplication tables.
It is not time for the great battle. Not yet. Queen Mama and King Dad still have a mighty arsenal excuses - all of which begin and end with “you’re six!” And our words still have more power than her demands.
We will join forces to maintain our girl’s childhood. Finally, we know it’s not just rumor and paranoia. It’s just the first concerted attack of our wall.
I’d love to say we were better prepared.