If we accept the premise that blogging is primarily storytelling, then if we can learn by writing stories, we can learn by blogging.

Ana Ulin, who has a multicultural and multilingual background (and currently lives in Sweden) is the author of the blog at anaulin.org.

In this entry, she offers a number of quotes on the process of writing from the book How to Get a PhD, and then adds:

"Interestingly, the 'writing to learn' idea is in tune with some popular ideas about blog writing." She then cites several blogs that reinforce the writing-to-learn by blogging concept.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Ah, I think I've found a blogish kind of Web page that is somewhat analogous to the exploration of story/narrative I'm trying to conduct with this blog.

In 2004, Jill Walker started researching distributed narratives. She uses this page to track her progress on the project.

Her paper, Distributed Narrative: Telling Stories Across Networks, which I admit I haven't totally digested yet, is available in a 10-page version, a 20-page version (these first two are PDFs; you can download them at her page above), and as a Web version of slides.

Walker writes:

"Distributed narratives don't bring media together to make a total artwork. Distributed narratives explode the work altogether, sending fragments and shards across media, through the network and sometimes into the physical spaces that we live in. This project explores this new narrative trend, looking at how narrative is spun across the network and into our lives."

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Supporting the notion that blogging is a form of storytelling:

Michael Heraghty and Gerald Adams prepared a 500-word proposal for the European Conference on Weblogs, 2003.

The authors contend that if no story moves through the "blog," it is not a blog. Ulp -- beginning to wonder if my blog is a blog on that basis. Perhaps mine is the story of my exploration of story.

Key points that especially resonate with me:

A site may utilize blog-style UI conventions (calendar, archives, etc.) but if it has no underlying narrative – no story moving through a past, present and future – it is not a blog.

---

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

 

In an earlier entry, I described the presentation by storytelling author and expert Annette Simmons at a storytelling conference in Washington, DC, in April. I mentioned how Annette had pulled an Oprah-like act of generosity and given each audience member a copy of The Story Factor Composition Book (pictured) and the accompanying CD with a sample of the first two lessons that go with the composition book.

I finally had a chance to listen to the CD, and it was a delight to again listen to Annette's Carolina twang. I've reviewed several audio products in my work for QuintCareers, and they are usually quite didactic and lecture-y. Annette's is, conversely, completely conversational. The first two segments are about 20 minutes each, which seems like about the right length, and they are full of illustrative stories. I have to say that in all the research I've done about storytelling in the last year, proponents talk a lot about the value of story, but there seems to be a dearth of examples of actual stories. Not the case with Annette's CD, which also offers some old-timey, twangy musical interludes that sound exactly like what you'd hear sitting around the campfire listening to stories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I recently received an article for publication from Suzanne Falter-Barns about how blogs are beating out ezines.

But I'm not so sure. I thought about ezine publishers I know who have switched to a blog format. Find Your Way was a newsletter that became a blog. It's a good one, too, but I never think to check it out since I'm no longer receiving mailings about it from its publisher, Liz Sumner. In contrast, I get regular mailings from Kevin Donlin, who used to send an ezine but now sends monthly reminders of his blog. I rarely visit the blog, though, because the monthly reminders have sometimes linked to an annoying "audio postcard." One of my favorite ezines is Jennifer Warwick's Success Tips for Gutsy Women! Jennifer has just announced that she has started a blog, but she says the blog will fill a void between issues of her ezine. That seems to me to be a better approach than abandoning an ezine format altogether. At Quintessential Careers, we have an ezine, QuintZine, as well as what I would call a quasi-blog. If you don't have both -- or at least regular reminders to subscribers that they can visit your blog -- readers may forget about you.

Many of Falter-Barns's assertions make it seem as though blogs are better for the reader, but she actually makes them sound easier for the creator. She does make the point that if you trade your ezine in for a blog, you will no longer have to mess with subscription lists, which is a pretty good point. She says that all the e-marketers she knows have lost subscribers. QuintZine has not significantly lost subscribers since the Great AOL Meltdown (when AOL arbitrarily decided that we were spamming all our opt-in AOL subscribers, and we removed them from the list), but our list has remained static for more than a year. And we do all our circulation functions manually, so it would be kind of nice not to have to do that. Of course, at QuintCareers, it's actually sort of a goal to lose subscribers because that means they have found a job and no longer need our advice.

Anyway, here's Falter-Barns's article:

I was all set this morning to write about something totally different in this issue ... but thanks to the power of blogs, I'm here to deliver a totally different message. Namely the ascendance of blogs over ezines.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I came across the blog of a guy named Greg who is an aspiring writer, and who, as of April 4, was unemployed. His 6-part (so far) narrative of his unemployment makes an interesting entry in the category of storytelling and career. He graduated from college in 2004 and does not want to settle for just any job. He writes reasonably well for a new college grad. I’m eager to know how his job search has progressed since April 2005.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

"You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not."

Courtesy of my partner, Randall. And Isabel Allende, of course.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I'm winding up a 13-day trip for my PhD program, during which I wanted to make blog entries every day, but I always had more pressing obligations. On my drive from VA to NH, I listened to an audiobook by Hugh Hewitt on blogging. I think that blogging about the book represents an interesting convergence of current forms of communication.

The book wasn't really what I was expecting -- I guess I thought it would be more of a "how-to." It's a kind of a smug argument for why blogs are THE communication form, using four examples in which bloggers called so much attention to stories not getting appropriate attention in the mainstream media that the stories eventually DID get attention in the MSM, as Hewitt calls it. I don't deny that blogging is big and important at the moment, but who's to say that some new kind of communication isn't going to come along at any moment and supplant blogging? Hewitt also offers a rather belabored comparison between the Protestant Reformation (Gutenberg, movable type, etc.) and blogging. I was a bit predisposed not to like the book much because I don't share Hewitt's politics. There's a review of the book on Instapundit for those interested.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I came across another fascinating piece that relates story to career, in this case the careers of women. Teresa J. Carter conducted a heuristic study in which she was co-researcher with 10 women. She interviewed them and also had them keep journals. Here’s the reference followed by the story-related excerpt:

Carter, T. J. (2002). The importance of talk to midcareer women’s development: A collaborative inquiry. The Journal of Business Communication, 39(1), p. 55+.

Telling their stories to me in narrative format through our conversations and through their journal entries became the means of re-framing identities and gaining self-understanding.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.