I had an out-of-body experience on Thursday. Or so it seemed.

The backstory:

As regular readers know, I’ve been posting about a four-part journey to craft a personal bio story (see a listing of these posts at the bottom of this post), led by Michael Margolis of Get Storied. I’ve played the roles of both reporter/blogger and participant.

For the fourth and final session (“Putting the Elements Together”), participants were to prepare a draft of their personal bio stories and had the option of submitting them to be critiqued in the final session.

So, I did that. My draft sprang, to a small extent, from a previous bio, which, in turn sprang from my LinkedIn Profile.

[Side note: Although most of the samples Michael had given before we developed our drafts were in third-person, I felt I needed to do mine in first-person (like the Jon Thomas sample Michael gave).]

So, here’s where the out-of-body experience comes in. The bulk of the final session consisted of Michael’s critique of 13 bios that had been submitted. Mine was maybe 10th or 11th in the sequence.

What Michael said about mine was so unexpected and emotionally overwhelming to me, that I literally felt as though my spirit left my body and was hovering somewhere overhead. It was a little like being in yoga class and having the instructor say, “Empty your mind of thoughts, but if any stray thoughts enter your head, simply acknowledge them and let them float away.” Michael’s words were like those thoughts — in my head, but not really, just passing fleetingly. Meanwhile, back on Earth in my embodied self, I felt myself turning beet purple and as though I wanted to weep. I got the essence of what Michael was saying, but I could not even tell you right afterwards exactly what he had said because I was so overwhelmed. (Luckily, the session was recorded, and I could revisit it.)

So, did Michael like my bio? Not really. But apparently he really likes my work and cited a huge disconnect between my work and the bio. He said:

… [Y]ou don’t do justice to the power of your work and contribution. … Your blog is one of the leading distinations online for applied or organizational storytelling. And you’ve done interviews with … how many 155, 3,000 storytelling experts, whatever that is [it’s about 65]. … You have the opportunity to claim more authority for you passion, your commitment, your contribution to your field. … the opportunity to put some of that more front and center. … You are one of the most dedicated pople I know who is working in the world of storytelling.

Meanwhile, in the webinar’s chat box, participants were typing things like: “Kathy, your blog is amazing! It take such dedication to do what you do, posting every day and covering such a broad field” and “Own it girl!”

Ulp. Out-of-body experience.

I offer more of Michael’s analysis of my bio, not so much so I can keep talking about myself, but so it might enlighten others interested in crafting this kind of personal bio story. (And by the way, watch for tomorrow’s post for information about how you can get in on Michael’s teachings.)

One of the five elements (see graphic at left) that Michael recommends for these personal bio stories is External Validators, the “social proof” of our expertise and accomplishments. I decided to use links for most of my External Validators; I figured I’d take up less space that way, and readers could learn more if they want to. Michael also recommends Personal Markers, the often quirky, eccentric stuff that humanizes us — the stuff that, as Michael says, we “geek out on.” I also listed my Personal Markers in the form of links at the bottom of my bio. Did Michael like the link approach? Not so much. “One one hand, it was really cool. Wow, you can explore all these different worlds,” he said, “but the experience was that as I read through, it gave me so many doors to walk through that I didn’t really know where I stood.”

Michael also criticized — and rightly so — my second paragraph, about being a “divine dilettante.” He said I sounded like I was apologizing. It was a last-minute inclusion, harkening back many years ago to a time when my best friend and I tried to redeem the reputation of dilettantism. I thought of his critique of another participant’s bio story, in which Michael cautioned against “telling it like you’re therapeutically working your way through it.”

One of the most important components of Michael’s Personal Bio Story concept is Gifts/Expertise, or defining our work. (The importance gained even more clarity during the critiques because it seemed that most of us hadn’t defined our work as clearly or prominently as we could have.) The hardest part of the process for me was defining my work. The conclusion I came to at the end of Michael’s Reinvention Summit back in November was that I wanted to make a living using my passion for applied storytelling. I have been struggling with how to do that.

Thus, I decided that in the Personal Bio Story I would see if I could make Defining My Work a self-fulfilling prophesy. I said “I teach — in the classroom, online, and through my writing.” While I have done all three of those kinds of teaching, the only one I’m currently doing is writing.

And here’s what Michael said that really turned me into a beet-purple, teary-eyed, out-of-body blob of embarrassment, shame, pride, astonishment, fraudulence, lack of confidence, and 75 other unidentified emotions:

Here’s what I want to hear from you in this bio: What’s the riddle you’re trying to solve? … You are so committed to this stuff. And nowhere in your bio do I get a sense of why you do this. What’s the kernel you’re chasing after? … Why does storytelling matter to you? … Reveal some of that. That’s your power and your strength and what’s going to invite me into to connect emotionally.

I responded in the chat box that I wasn’t sure what riddle I’m trying to solve, to which another participant responded, “Kathy, I don’t connect with ‘riddle’ either, but QUEST really resonates. Your dedication shows drive that comes from a deep source.”

But why DO I do it? I’m not sure I can articulate the answer. Not yet anyway. I don’t make even an infinitesimal part of a living from it. It does not promote any other business endeavor. But in terms of work, it’s all I want to do, and I am constantly frustrated that I don’t have enough time for it.

(Michael also felt I should explain my passion for the career-management field, which has been my work for more than 20 years, but I feel I’m moving beyond that field and don’t have the passion for it I used to.)

This post is already quite long. I need to think and write more about my riddle, my quest, my why. Here’s what I know:

Writing this blog is everything to me (at least professionally). You, my readers, are everything to me. To be continued ….

Previous posts in this series:

• second webinar: Revealing the thru-line arc
• prep for second webinar, preparation for second webinar
• summary of the first webinar: Remembering, mapping Plot Points l (best viewed in Firefox or Internet Explorer).
• first post, about the prequel to a series of three webinars: Moving from an Old Story to a New Story.

One more thing: This seems like a terrible week for my comments function to be disabled, which it is because of some tech issues I’ve been experiencing. It’s the week of Kendall Haven’s remarkably provocative Q&A and my bio dilemma. If you’d like to share any thoughts on either, please e-mail them to me, and I’ll post them.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Annie Hart, a participant in my Q&A series, announced today that she has launched three new blogs.

The most story-oriented seems to be Stories Change the World, “which brings forth ancient wisdom for modern times,” Annie writes. She further elaborates in her first post:

My deepest wish is to share the wisdom from the ancients — the mystics, prophets, and teachers who knew the way so long ago. I believe the time is now and that stories truly do change the world. May the stories in this blog be a modern pathway for ancient knowledge and a tribute to our elders who have held this wisdom for us until now.

The other two blogs seem as though they will be written in stories but not about stories. Breaking Through comprises “stories, insights and tools for getting unstuck and breaking through in your life, while Tales from the Love Goddess offers “the truth behind love and real relationships.” Further:

This blog is my dedication to a new way for love and relationships on this planet, featuring stories generated from personal experience, the lives of other women and the persistent urging of my niece Devon, to share these tales. Every month, one woman’s story will unfold. These may eventually become a book but, for the moment, each tale is separate and distinct.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

When I first started this blog five years ago, I imagined that I would blog a lot more about storytelling and blogging than I turned out to do. I don’t see a lot written in the blogosphere about storytelling in blogs.

I know that when I sometimes tell stories about my own life in this space, I feel self-indulgent and as though I am foisting something trivial and uninteresting on readers. Yet, those life-story entries are often the ones that get the most response from readers.

Last week, Kimberly Turner offered a good reminder of the value of storytelling in blogs. Using Regator (a site “designed to help you find quality blog posts … by using highly selective human editors to find well-written, topical blogs on more than 500 topics then a combination of semantic algorithms and user interaction to find the most interesting, timely, and noteworthy posts from those blogs”), Turner identified 10 blog posts (from among blogs on trending topics) representing good storytelling and analyzed the characteristics that resulted in their compelling stories.

“Telling a story in a more narrative form adds emotional impact, suspense, interest, and imagery,” Turner notes. “People communicate in stories every day and, used sparingly and appropriately, they can add a lot to your blog.”

Here are the 10 storytelling posts Turner isolated:

1. Huffington Post’s My Whole Street Is a Mosque
2. The Seminal’s On the Luxury of ‘Coming Out’ When You Feel Like It
3. Devil Ball Golf’s The complete Tiger Woods timeline, from Escalade to divorce
4. Bors Blog Haircuts in Herat
5. Ad Age’s How to Almost Sabotage a Dinner Party With Facebook ‘Places’
6. Jalopnik’s I Sold Everything To Buy A Lamborghini And Drive Across The Country
7. TV Squad’s Oops! Most Embarrassing Emmys Moments
8. Journeys to Democracy’s Personal Note: Flood Relief in Remote Kohistan
9. PopWatch’s Miss Universe: Help me convince myself to watch
10. Warming Glow’s Oh My God, ‘The Walking Dead’ Trailer Is Amazing

And here are some of the characteristics that make these good storytelling blog posts, in Turner’s opinion:

• Good stories have enough details to help readers form a visual.
• Use your own personal experiences and stories to connect with readers on an emotional level but be sure your story ties in with your post’s goal …
• Stories are essentially a sequence of actions that create a plot.
• Make your story captivating and interesting…in other words, not something that your readers experience in their everyday lives.
• Depending on the purpose of your story, it may or may not be necessary to give a great deal of detail about the characters. Keep your focus on what’s relevant.
• Use quotes and images where appropriate to add detail to a story.
• Stories don’t have to be long.
• The best stories have their fair share of suspense.
• Stories can be used to establish camaraderie with readers rather than to create tension and suspense.
• Move beyond text to visually tell a story.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Recently, storyteller Eric James Wolf turned the tables on me. I’ve conducted more than 57 Q&As with story practitioners — and now Eric has done a Q&A with me. I thought it would be worthwhile to excerpt some of it here because it explains some of my philosophies and approaches with this blog.

In this entry, Eric asked me how I define “storytelling” and why I’m interested in it:

I am among the storytelling fans who do not like to be boxed in by a specific definition of “story” or “storytelling.” I’ve found in the more than 57 interviews I’ve conducted with storytelling practitioners that most of them, perhaps surprisingly, prefer not to define “storytelling.” (However, a few feel a strict definition is vitally important.) Of the definitions offered by the practitioners who prefer to define story/storytelling, I’ve liked some more than others. One of my favorites is: “Story is context.”

I think I have been interested in storytelling for most of my life, but I didn’t really recognize the passion until I began my PhD program. I was taking an organizational-behavior course that focused on postmodernism. While researching the concept of postmodernism, I discovered an entire academic (and applied) discipline I had never heard of: organizational storytelling. This field instantly resonated with me, causing me to realize how much I had always loved storytelling, going back to eating up the anecdotes in Reader’s Digest as a child. I was so intrigued by organizational storytelling that I made it the centerpiece of my doctoral dissertation, which combined my professional background in career management and job search with storytelling.

While in my PhD program, I started [this] blog as part of my coursework. As I completed my doctoral program, my storytelling interests began to expand. Organizational storytelling was too narrow to encompass my interests, so I broadened the blog’s scope — and my own passions — to the field of “applied storytelling,” a term I first heard from Michael Margolis.

My work on the blog was sporadic for its first three years; I would go long stretches without blogging. But in February of 2008, I made a commitment to blog 7 days a week. I have mostly lived up to that commitment, although I have skipped some days during my recent major, cross-country move.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Michael Margolis has proclaimed a 12-week story blogging challenge for himself and has invited others to join him. He’s challenged himself in conjunction with his Social Media Jedi Program, which launched last week. The challenge is to blog at least weekly.

In the comments to his entry announcing the challenge, I said:

Great idea, Michael. How do you define “story blogging” and how does it align with “personal musing[s], stream of consciousness idea[s]?” (He had used the terms “personal musing, stream of consciousness idea” to describe what he would be doing during the challenge.)

Michael used my comments as the jumping-off point for a subsequent blog entry elaborating on what he meant by “story blogging.” Here are some excerpts:

For me story is more than just performance/telling/anecdotes. Story is about relationship; who am I; where do I belong; what is mine to do?

Story blogging is about bringing people into one’s world through conversation and dialogue. It begins by seeking to map, explore, and understand convergence and context. I stand at the unique intersection of many worlds. I’ll be sharing many of these musings and reflections in real time.

Story blogging. There’s a quick recipe I’m playing with:

Passion – this is the fuel and motivation that lights the fire. If it doesn’t excite me and give me energy, how I can possibly expect to do the same for you?

Perspective – point of view is what gives it all distinctive flavor. The same reason why FOX NEWS and MSNBC are succeeding, and CNN is flailing.

Relevance – discussing issues, questions, and challenges that others can relate to – that’s what makes the whole meal easy to digest, puts a smile on people’s faces, and encourages people to come back.

Nourishment – is what I’m trying to create through my story blogging. Provide meaningful, playful, and generative contribution into readers’ lives.

Michael also says he’ll clarify some of the principles of story blogging during the 12-week challenge.

Since my personal mandate is to blog daily, blogging weekly isn’t much of a challenge for me. But I could challenge myself during this time to “story blog.”

How about you? Will you take the challenge?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Lou Hoffman, president and CEO of The Hoffman Agency, writes about storytelling as seen through a business prism in his blog Ishmael’s Corner.

He has identified his top 10 storytelling-related blog posts of 2009 in two parts:

• Part I
• Part II

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Two new story blogs emerged in the waning months of 2009, produced by story folks I highly admire and respect:

Story Route, published by Cathryn Wellner, features entries in such categories as business narrative, organizational storytelling, personal narratives, poems, social myths, and storytelling quotations. Cathryn writes: “Join me on the Story Route. We’ll explore personal stories, stories organizations tell, even some stories countries tell.” She shared with me this heartwarming video story — with a twist — about training a service dog.

Meanwhile, Cynthia Kurtz has started Story Colored Glasses. Cynthia wrote in her first blog entry back in October, “The point of this blog is to give some of the ideas that chose to land on me new places to go. May life surround them.” Many of Cynthia’s early entries have focused on her “eight observations about stories and storytelling in groups, and about helping people tell and work with stories.” She writes that her eight observations “were not scientific findings; they were just things I had encountered that had surprised me and that gave me food for thought. (Nor were they original thoughts, if there are such things; many others have talked about them as well.) As the years go by I find myself returning to the eight things often; so I thought a good way to start this blog might be to talk about each observation and what I think it means for those of us who work with stories.”

I want to wish my readers a fulfilling and story-filled new year!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Reader Raf Stevens’s challenge to me to present examples of good storytelling had the interesting effect of getting me thinking about categories of storytelling that one can access on the Internet. Here’s the list so far:

• Digital/video storytelling
• Live storytelling performance, captured on video
• Live storytelling performance, captured on audio
• Stories — preferably nonfiction — that are told purely with words in print (as opposed to spoken words); in other words, a story that must be read. I asked for nominations here, but have not received any yet.

I’ve come across a couple of examples of sub-genres in the last category:

• The founding story of an organization. Thaler Pekar turned me onto the story of how Mercy Corps was founded 30 years ago.
• Blog storytelling. I’ve written before about blogs that consistently present good storytelling, and Moon Over Martinborough remains one of my favorite examples. Here’s a single story in a blog that touched me: Reprise: Ode to FM Sunday Mornings, by Jesaka Long, whose a.k.a. writer blog is a delightful new find.

Why is it important to categorize, appreciate, and identify good examples of the narrative Web? To counter assertions like Ben MacIntyre’s “the Internet is killing storytelling” that I took on here. All of these examples show the Internet’s capacity for enhancing and disseminating excellent storytelling.

(I smell “Best of the Narrative Web” awards.)

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I'm delighted to have participated in yesterday's Blog Action Day 09 (thanks to guest writer Cathryn Wellner), joining 13,222 blogs from 155 countries with more than 17 million readers. Also blogging were the governments of the United Kingdom and Spain along with The White House.

From a roundup post toward the close of the event:

For the past day bloggers in 155 countries across six continents have written about a single issue that impacts us all, and turned BAD09 into one of the largest social change events ever held on the web.

Your participation helped change the conversation and showed the power of the web to connect people across the world who despite their varied backgrounds have one shared desire: to make a difference. According to blogpulse, we increased the number of posts about climate change on a given day by about 500%, and CNN wrote a great article covering the excitement and diversity of today's event across the web and around the world. ... We are about to hit 27,000 total trackable blog posts, and our current estimate is that together we reached at least 17 million people today. We are also about to exceed 12,000 registered bloggers on the site ...

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

“One thing that people ask me all the time is: ‘is storytelling dying?’” said Dale Jarvis, the Intangible Cultural Heritage development officer for Newfoundland, in a transcript of a podcast interview on PreservationToday.com

I know what Dale’s talking about. I constantly see articles lamenting “the lost (or dying) art of storytelling.” Maybe it’s because I am acutely tuned in to storytelling, but “lost” and “dying” are the last adjectives I would apply to storytelling.

Dale’s response:

I really believe that things are always in a constant state of evolution. I think traditions are always changing, and I think that the rise of things like YouTube indicate that people are really passionate about storytelling. They really want to share their own personal stories.

So, it is sort of a really great democratization of storytelling in a way. Maybe people don’t sit around and tell the long-form fairy tales in quite the same way that they used to, but people are incredibly interested in sharing their own personal stories and creating stories and sharing them.

Yes. On Friday, I talked about this phenomenon particularly with regard to blogging. In that entry, I quoted academician Cynthia Franklin: “I argue that blogs are serving as a kind of ‘memoir-on-the-go…”

Here are a few more examples of blogs that are “memoirs on the go” (suggested by Joel Kelly on Ingenioustries in an entry entitled The keys to a storytelling blog:

• The Typing Makes Me Sound Busy, the blog of Jelisa “J-Money” Castrodale, “a freelance writer and stand-up comic who is fueled by an enamel-eroding Diet Coke habit and an insane love of music, both of which put her in the categories of ‘good at Jeopardy!’ and ‘annoying to have at parties.’” Kelly describes the blog like this: ” The story is Jelisa’s life. We know she’s kind of broke, loves running, and has had plenty of hilarious dating misadventures. And she’s trying to get more professional writing work. The content [comprises] her posts about what goes on in her life.”
• Gaping Void, the blog of Hugh McLeod, a cartoonist who sells limited-edition prints, published a book in June (which as of today, Aug. 17, is No. 1 in Amazon’s “creativity” category. He is also CEO of Stormhoek USA, a small wine brand out of South Africa, which just launched in America. Kelly says: “The story is Hugh living in Alpine, Texas, doing some futile marketing and making awesome artwork after having been a traditional ad man for 10 years. The content [comprises] his cartoons and marketing insights (often the same thing).”
• Vegan Dad, who describes his blog this way: “When you have kids, supper has to be on the table every night. And when you are a vegan, the drive-thru, the deli counter, and TV dinners/frozen convenience foods are not an option. So, you do the best you can. This blog is a record of what my family eats. It’s not always a totally complete meal, not always photogenic, and sometimes it’s leftovers. But, it is a realistic look at a vegan family in a northern Ontario city that is not always vegan-friendly.” Kelly: “Story — A, well, vegan dad who wants his family to be healthy and eat great food. He’s got a few boys and a brand new vegan daughter, and he wants to share the cool food he makes for them with other vegans. Content — Amazing recipes. They’re usually fairly simple because we know from the overall story that he’s a busy guy.”

• Maximum Fun, of which Kelly say: “Story — Jesse Thorn, 28, is living his dream of hosting a public radio show (and podcasts), despite the odds (it doesn’t really make him much money). He struggles, he finds success, and you’re on the journey with him of living his dream. Content — The episodes and blog posts themselves. The things he creates and controls. Each episode of his show or podcasts are framed by the fact that he’s young, fairly broke, but having a huge amount of fun interviewing his heroes and hanging out with his friends.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.