Storytelling helps us know what it means to be human...

Storytelling is important, in all times and all places. Storytelling, like all art, helps us know what it’s like to be human, including:

- What we have been in the past;
- What we are like now;
- What we are capable of becoming in the future.

Art does this in myriad ways, from van Gogh’s paintings of sunflowers to great novels about imagined worlds. The art of storytelling does this through both informal and formal exchanges, from folktales told around a campfire, to personal experiences shared in a diner, to concert storytelling performances on large stages.

The Experience Factor

Is it any secret that the pace of our society is accellerating? And that the more we work and the more we consume, the less satisfied we are on the deepest levels?

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy not having to worry about the basics like food and shelter. I also love the fine things in life. I like my tools, including computers; I am very glad they exist.

Yet I also believe in the wise words of the Jewish compendium of writings known as the Talmud:

“Who is weathly? The one who is happy with his portion.”

In a society based largely on consumption, status, and the profit-motive, artists help shine a light on the quality of human experience.

Art Is Dangerous

Any government dependent on deception or injustice fears art...

Because all honest art helps us know who we are as humans, art is important to societies.

Without accurate knowledge of human experience, human nature and human potential, no society can make intelligent decisions about how to use its resources.

At the same time, any government or system dependent on deception or injustice fears the truth about humanity and our experiences – and therefore fears art.

If you don’t believe this, consider how often a new dictator moves immediately to control art. Consider why Franco’s forces killed the poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca even before their full military victory in Spain, or why songwriter Victor Jara was assasinated – and the masters of his recordings burned – soon after a military junta overthrew the elected Chilean president in 1973.

Controlling Art in a Free Society

In our society, we control art not with guns or a Soviet-style bureaucracy, but, in part, with the star system. The star system elevates a few artists to “star” and even “super star” status. Because there is a limited supply of such stars, it’s possible to profit from them by creating a monopoly.

A recording company, for example, can control the supply and distribution of the star musician’s work. And, because the star is now dependent on the company, the company can also partly control the star.

Incidentally, the extravagant promotion of a relatively few artists’ work, in itself, often discourages other artists. (“If you had talent, you’d be rich.”) Still others are kept from seeking their own truth by their desire to “make it big” (that is, by pursuing fame rather than the truth of their own vision).

This is not to disparage the work of famous artists. Often they are magnificent writers, singers, painters, etc. Yet there are many non-star artists whose work is also worthy of being more widely shared, but is filtered out by a system that requires mass popularity for mass profits.

Such filtering affects all artists, but some artforms, including in-person storytelling, are particularly ill-suited to mass consumption. The for-profit organizations that dominate our society are indifferent to such artforms. As a result, performance storytelling operates only along the fringes of society, where resources are in shorter supply.

Sadly, all this works to encourage artists to compete against each other, fighting over the crumbs available to us as non-stars. Our natural gratitude for each other (as companions on the path of art) can be replaced by carping and jealousy. This further distracts us from our true possibilities—and our importance to each other and to society.

Signs of Hope

A new appreciation for people telling their own stories...

In spite of the difficulties currently faced by artists in general and storytellers in particular, I am excited by hopeful developments in recent years. We see, for example, a new appreciation of people telling their own stories, as evidenced in the U.S. by the rise of The Moth, of story slams, and of organized story-collection projects like StoryCorps.

The internet is another source of hope. To be sure, live, two-way storytelling is not yet taking place in significant amounts on the internet. But the strangle-hold of mass publishers over the availability of art is being weakened. It is increasingly easy to create and post audio recordings, videos, books, photographs and more – and it is increasingly easy for others to access and pay for such art.

Further, artists can now easily connect with each other via the web. We can share our work with each other. We can share our experiences, even when separated by oceans.

We can also share how-to information about our artforms, information that would never have found its way into the more limited pre-internet channels of books, broadcast, and recordings.

Thankful for Being A Storyteller Now

In other words, it’s a good time to be a storyteller. No matter how isolated we are locally, if we have access to an internet connection we have a world community at our fingertips. And we have access to information about our art.

In this case, information is power. It gives us the power to be inspired by each other to create our unique styles, to understand the inner workings of our art, and to share what we have learned widely and easily.

It’s a great time to be a storyteller, not because rivers of money are flowing to us or because we are prominent in society, but because it’s a great time to become the storyteller you are capable of being – and therefore to help nudge society ever closer to what it, too, is capable of becoming.

For all this opportunity, I give thanks – and a promise to re-dedicate my efforts.

Contents

1) WHAT KEEPS A STORYTELLER GOING?

2) SUBSCRIBER SPECIAL: NEW COURSE ON LEARNING YOUR GIFTS

• Read more or request an application

1) WHAT KEEPS A STORYTELLER GOING?

In many ways, we performing storytellers don’t live easy lives.

We get up early, pack the car, and drive to our audiences...

We spend years developing our skills and our repertory. We figure out how to find audiences. Most of us spend countless hours on the phone arranging performances and negotiating what we’ll tell.

Then we get up early (or stay up late), pack the car, drive to our audiences (or to an airport), and deal with the sound systems, the noisy auditoriums, the sometimes poorly planned events. And then we repeat the process again and again.

Oh, and did I mention that the pay is often low?

So, why do we do all that? What’s in it for us?

Riding the Racehorse

I remember my first time to perform as a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN.

The audience had been listening to stories for two days straight. Their response was immediate and strong!

On Friday and Saturday, I told in short sets: 12 to 30 minutes at a time.

Then came 1pm on Sunday: my solo hour. My listeners were primed and ready. They had been listening to stories for two days straight.

I began my first story and felt awe. The audience’s response was immediate and strong! As the performance went on, I adjusted happily to their amazing responsiveness. It was like spending an hour horseback riding, in perfect unity with a powerful, sensitive thoroughbred in its prime. Wow!

Last in Line

After my set (and the applause) was over, a line of people formed, waiting to thank me individually for the particular ways in which I had touched them.

After 30 years, I remember one person in that line.

He was the last in line. He was perhaps 30, slight of build, wearing a worn, long-sleeve denim shirt. He looked to me like he came from the rural South.

When nearly everyone else had left the tent, he stood about 5 feet from me, as though he were too shy to come nearer. I took one step closer to him and looked in his eyes. They were wide open and moist.

I waited. At last he said, “Things have been kind of hard.” He sounded choked up.

I nodded and waited again.

He said, “Those were some stories I needed to hear.” He began to cry.

I stepped forward, put my arms around him, and held him gently for a few minutes.

Then he stepped back, locked eyes with me for a second or two, smiled, and turned and left.

The Gift

I never saw him again or learned what he had found in my stories that day.

But I didn’t need to. I had received from him a precious gift, perhaps the most precious a teller can receive.

He let me know that I had given him what he most needed that day, that my stories had touched him in the exact way he had needed to be touched – that, in their mysterious way, the stories had spoken through me a message perhaps unknown to me.

The Reason?

Isn’t that what keeps so many of us at storytelling? Sure, most of us love the applause, the attention, the chance to hold sway. But those things aren’t the deepest motivators.

My deepest motivation became visible that day in Tennessee, in that one man’s face: storytelling gives me a chance to give people something they need. It gives me the feeling of offering just the right thing, of being the right person at the right time.

That feeling doesn’t depend on all my listeners being generous enough to tell me what it was like for them. In fact, the more often I feel it happening, the more I learn to sense it – to know that, even when no one thanks me for it, someone in the crowd has received a unique gift.

That’s what keeps me coming back. That’s what keeps me going as a storyteller.

What about you? I welcome your reasons at http://www.storydynamics.com/current.

2) SUBSCRIBER SPECIAL: NEW COURSE ON LEARNING YOUR GIFTS

Over the years, I learned that I can give people just what they need by performing – but also by other ways.

I discovered the joy of teaching about storytelling, of helping people find the “missing second leg” in their communication, the leg that propels the heart and the imagination, not just the intellect.

I also learned the joy of coaching, of helping other tellers to overcome obstacles they face in their storytelling, helping them move closer to being the unique tellers that only they can become.

Help Others Learn to Help Others?

They I began to think: If meeting people’s unique needs is my prime motivation, and if I can learn multiple ways to meet people’s needs, then could I maybe help other tellers get that same satisfaction, using their unique gifts in new ways, too?

I tried multiple approaches, from “mastermind groups” to four-month, online courses with 20 people.

But last year, I pioneered a new approach: a telephone plus web course with only 6 people. The small number meant that, in the 6 sessions of the course, I could schedule two coaching sessions for EACH participant (one of them for a full hour) as well as two meaty lessons.

Better yet, the group of 6 would gain from hearing each other be coached to make such significant progress. They would become a mini-community of people learning to use their storytelling skills to meet customers’ needs in unique ways.

Course Starting in October

I am offering such a phone/web course again this fall. Its six sessions will begin the first week of October and be over by the Thanksgiving holiday.

Learn to use your gifts in new ways - without leaving home

It may happen, of course, that not every participant gets the coaching they need in the first 6 sessions. If that happens, we’ll schedule additional meetings in January. I promise to give enough coaching (in the class or privately) that each of you in the course will:

1. Discover a group (a market) who is hungry for what you have to offer;
2. Create the title and outline of a digital product that will attract just the people in that group.

(If you want further help in actually creating the digital product from your outline and offering it to members of your new market, additional optional courses will follow in the winter and spring. In fact, with one of the additional courses, I will offer free websites optimized to help you reach your market.)

Save By Just Asking for an Application

To make this $795 course more affordable to you – and to encourage you to sign up early – I’m offering an Early Bird Special discount.

All you need to do to lock in your discount is to request a simple, 5-question application. Just click the large button toward the end of this web page:

http://IrresistibleOfferCourse.com

You may want to read the page, even if you’re not interested in the course at this time. It contains useful information about how to “get off the storytelling treadmill” by adding to your storytelling income.

• Read more or request an application

I have been uneasy with the idea of standards. After all, humans have been telling stories well for millennia without the benefit of formal standards. More importantly, in our society we tend to misuse standards to rank what can’t be ranked and to focus on that which can be readily measured – as opposed to that which really matters.

On the other hand, storytelling done well is transformative, whereas storytelling done poorly can be boring or inane. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could separate one from the other or at least identify clearly what needs to be improved?

It’s easy to start making lists of things a storyteller must do in order to be excellent. They range from the physical, like “have good diction” to the structural, like “have a dramatic build to a climax.”

As sympathetic as I am to the intent of this approach, I remain uncomfortable with the fact of an abstract list of what makes storytelling excellent. Why? Storytelling is so dependent on the context in which it’s done. We tell stories differently (and hear them differently) depending on the who, where, and why of the storytelling event.

The story that might be transformative in a bar among friends, for example, would be interpreted differently if told from the pulpit in a house of worship. A story that might be moving and memorable when told to your child at night would not necessarily work at the National Storytelling Festival. Of course, the festival story might not necessarily work well if it were told in a corporate board meeting.

Therefore, standards need to be dependent on the situation. As a first step toward clarity about this, let’s look at the six “bosses” that I believe we serve: six sets of expectations that jointly determine our success.

Suppose you are hired to perform stories. First, the person who hired you (the “organizer”) has goals and objectives. If you don’t achieve those, you will not succeed.

Second is the funder – who may be the same as the organizer or not. If you’re telling in a school and a teacher brings you in as the organizer, the funding may come from a Parent Teacher Organization or a state arts council. The funder’s goals must be responded to, too.

Third is the listeners. In schools, students are the primary listeners – and may have very different expectations and needs from those of the teacher and the PTO. To succeed, you must respond appropriately to all these sets of expectations.

Fourth, the situation in which you are telling brings along its own expectations, both implicit and explicit. The way you would tell a story in a 400-student assembly in the cafetorium of an elementary school will likely differ from what you would do in an individual classroom of 30 students or in a private moment with an individual child – not to mention what you would do in a child’s bedroom at home or in the school committee board room.

Fifth, you have goals and expectations of your own. Someone might say, “YOUR goals don’t affect excellence. The goals of the others are the only goals that matter.” But there is a danger to that perspective. If you aren’t finding a way to engage your passions, if you’re not tapping into your vital energies, then, even though you may meet the surface expectations, your storytelling won’t be fully alive. It won’t have the spark of creativity and joy that only comes when you’re having the time of your life.

Finally, there is a sixth “boss” that can trump them all: the needs of the moment. You can go in with a story that is likely to be perfectly suited to the situation, the listeners, the funders, the organizer, and your own goals. But something can happen at the last minute or even during the performance that changes everything. If you do not respond to the needs of the moment you will fail – no matter how well you’ve met the expectations of others.

Years ago, I told at an international conference of several thousand educators. The conference was large enough to have its own impromptu daycare center. There was so much programming that one of the storytelling performances started at 11pm.

The late-night show included four other tellers and me. The show’s topic was so specific that I knew only one suitable story of the right length. As a result, I knew exactly what I planned to tell.

But when we arrived at 11pm, the emcee made an announcement:

“Some of you know that there was an accident today in the daycare center here. A two-year-old fell off a platform. We have just learned that the child has since died.”

Immediately, the audience began murmuring to each other. Parents who had brought their children to the conference left to see them. Parents who had left their children far away left the room to call them on the phone. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, we were finally able to start the show.

What were the needs of the moment? To speak to these people who had just learned that something terrible had happened.

I had a choice: tell the story I had planned or tell a different story that might better meet the suddenly altered emotional needs of the listeners.

I decided to try to introduce the pre-selected story in a way that might somehow make it connect to the fact of the child’s death. It didn’t work. My story would have been excellent had the needs of the moment been different, but as it was, it failed.

When we are thinking about how to be excellent as storytellers, we cannot rely exclusively on abstract absolutes. As important as standard ways of speaking about storytelling excellence may become in the future, we will still need to relate everything we do to the task of meeting the needs of our six “bosses” – who change their demands from situation to situation, and, occasionally, from moment to moment.

Starting in the 1870s, lumber companies clear-cut the easily accessible white pine stands in the area. Destructive tree harvesting continued until the 1960s, when the forest was so weakened that it had lost much of its ability to regenerate. The rugged land was unsuited for agriculture, so some of the beautiful lake shores were sold to developers, leaving 70,000 acres of dubious commercial value.

Peter Schleifenbaum listens to a question

Sound like a familiar eco-tragedy? Here’s where the story takes a surprising turn.

In 1963, a German businessman bought the abused forest land. Over the next years, he was forced to sell off more lakefront to pay taxes on the property. But in 1987, his son, Peter Schleifenbaum, graduated with a doctorate in forestry – and moved from Germany to Haliburton Forest to try to save the forest.

Support the work that supports the forest?

How do you get enough income to manage a forest that has been stripped of nearly all saleable trees? How do you raise money to care for a natural environment without harming the environment in the process?

Schleifenbaum took this problem as his life’s work. His first attempts were fairly conventional: make the forest available for recreation, including fishing, hunting, and snowmobiling.

Pam and Doug on the canopy walkway

But what would make Haliburton Forest stand out? What could make an experience there unlike any other, and therefore valuable enough to command the kind of admission prices that would be needed to finance 70,000 acres of forest restoration?

One of his projects was the world’s longest canopy walkway through a remote stand of old-growth white pine. Another was a meditative tour below the surface of a mountain lake – in a one-of-a-kind tourist submarine. Still another was a 15-acre Wolf Park, containing a resident, non-tame pack of timber wolves, and a Wolf Center featuring a one-way-mirror viewing-room from which to observe the wolves.

Wolf seen from the viewing room into the Wolf Park

Still other projects are an astronomical observatory (at the right times of the year, the Northern Lights are visible there), ElderHostels, mountain bike trails, and sled-dogging.

Peter has also forged relationships with forest researchers at the University of Toronto. At this point, Haliburton Forest is eagerly sought after as a research site, because so much baseline data has already been gathered there.

The Problem of the Sawmill

One of the problems any forest faces is that lumber is sold to sawmills. Sawmills, in turn, demand the highest grade, healthy trees, which are actually essential to the forest. So Peter built his own sawmill, optimized for processing low-grade trees – which are the trees that the forest needs removed.

One of the normally unsaleable trees is eastern hemlock, in spite of its resistance to decay and insects. To create a market for those trees, Peter began Eco-Log Building Concepts, using eastern hemlock logs that are felled only when they come due for harvesting and are skidded by horse to avoid truck-damage to the forest.

In this way, Peter says, the forest no longer works for the sawmill; the sawmill works for the forest.

What Storytellers Can Learn from Haliburton Forest

As storytellers, we have problems similar to Peter Schleifenbaum’s:

• How can we make enough money to support our art?
• How can we “monetize” our art without harming it?
• How can we make our storytelling stand out in a forest of storytellers?
• How can we survive when the book and record publishers, the concert promoters, and all the rest have their own agendas?

From Peter’s story, therefore, we can learn lessons to help us support our art and our selves:

1. Take an active approach to solving the problem of earning a living, no matter how unfair or hopeless your situation seems at first.

2. Apply as much creativity to earning a living as you do to your art – and continue to apply it for decades. Search continuously for new ways to use your assets/skills.

Looking down from the canopy platform

3. Try things that no one else is doing; learn from others, but be willing to go beyond them.

4. Create multiple streams of income. Don’t rely exclusively on any one market, product, or approach.

5. Accept that failures are a part of the process. (Peter’s submarine has been in dry-dock for two years, due to disputes with local regulators. I heard some people complain that a submarine was a crazy idea, but Peter seems to understand that, in order to find lots of things that work, you need to try some that don’t pan out.)

6. If you are not well served by those who earn money from your efforts (like the sawmill owners), create alternatives that work for you.

7. Learn enough about business to succeed, but always work in service to your passion.

What about you? What lessons do you draw from Peter’s story? What ideas does it give you about your storytelling work?

Why haven’t I done story work so far? Sure, the house work has taken most of my time and energy.

But, to be honest, there is another problem: I have lost confidence in myself. After 6 weeks devoted to packing, moving, and unpacking, I have a bad case of what I’ve come to call “Time-Off Poisoning.”

Not the First Time

I remember other times when, intentionally or because of a slump in some section of the storytelling market, I have taken a couple months off.

Each time, I had a hard time starting up again. Each time, I could hardly remember – in spite of decades of this work – that I knew anything about telling stories. Or about coaching. Or that anyone else thought well of my work.

Others, Too

Some of my buddies experience this, too. It doesn’t seem to matter how much fame or success you’ve had. If you take an extended time off, you may face a crisis in self-confidence when you return.

If famous and successful long-time storytellers face this, it’s no wonder that many (most?) beginner and intermediate storytellers do, too.

What to Do?

If you are facing – or have already faced – such a “Time Off Poisoning” effect on your confidence, start by remembering two things:

1. You are not alone. Others face this, too.

2. This feeling has nothing to do with your actual abilities. Therefore, don’t take it as a sign that you shouldn’t be telling. Treat it as a phantom feeling, unrelated to the reality of your storytelling abilities.

Next week, I’ll send out two more quick tips, on strategies for dealing with Time Off Poisoning – including the antidote that got me back on track.

For now, just note that this effect exists for many of us. Don’t be fooled by it!