Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling is Satisfying WORK
It’s all so overwhelming and it seems everyone is tired, discouraged, maybe angry or cynical or depressed, maybe confused or disheartened…just weary. Each day during this April A-Z Blogging Challenge I’ll offer a short musing on an aspect or two of the many ways the ancient-yet-very-contemporary experience of storytelling – both listening and telling – is an […]
Practice Makes Perfect?
Over and over again I’ve read the advice from writers that the most important thing to do, if you wish to improve your writing, be a writer, write… …the most important thing to do is to write every day. Some advise to set a daily length-target (so many words or pages); others recommend setting a […]
I Wuz Robbed! – A Story
Let me tell you a story… November 21, 2014 – It was my first Moth story slam. The Moth! The storied, premier story slam event! I’d heard tell of it for a long time. Every now and then I’d caught “The Moth Radio Hour” on my public radio station. And now it had come to […]
6 Ways TEACHING Storytelling Helps One be a Better Storyteller
The Set-Up I recently had a whirlwind gig: Designing and giving a one-hour training to 350 museum volunteers, to equip them to tell pre-selected traditional stories as part of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science’s upcoming “Mythic Creatures” exhibit.
Story Slams Making Waves (Part 3) – Diving In Head First
It was my first-ever story slam! Not sure if “wow” or “hm” is my primary response…Wow. Hm. That was the gist of my Facebook post that night after I got home; and I started planning a 3-part blog series reflecting on story slams. Then… OHMIGOSH OHMIGOSH!!! I just got home from the 2nd Denver Moth […]
Week…Just 1 Until the Rocky Mountain Storytelling Conference
The Rocky Mountain Storytelling 2014 Conference is one week away! Storytelling conferences are always a fantastic opportunity to connect, to learn from others (previous blog post!), to learn by doing, to network – and of course to have fun! Rocky Mountain Storytelling holds its annual Colorado conference, “Storytelling: Craft & Connection,” next weekend in Denver on Friday […]
Stance – for Storytellers and Other Speakers!
Sometimes one of the biggest challenges for novice storytellers, it seems, is to learn to stand on their own two feet! 😉 Seriously – whether it’s nervousness, uncertainty about how to begin the story, or an established posture-habit – very often there’s a tendency to stand uncertainly, even awkwardly, with the weight on one […]
Questions – Ask Questions; They Will Lead You Forward
Questions are KEY to the story-choosing/ story-preparation / storytelling process! To really explore “questions” in storytelling would make a very long post indeed – which I’m going to avoid. To that end, for today I’m going to just list here a few of the questions that can be so useful.
Others – Learn from Them!
When someone asks me for advice on how to get started with storytelling, I always answer, “Two things:” 1) “Tell as much and as often as you can” – you learn about yourself, about stories you like, about how to be in front of people…and 2) “Listen as much and as often as you can […]
