Came across an interesting juxtaposition of two interests of mine. In an article title How to Write One’s Life Story in which author Christina Hamlett writes:

Fill out self-assessment quizzes and introspective writing exercises. In addition to personality tests you can find in consumer magazines and on the Internet, books such as Barbara Ann Kipfer’s 4,000 Questions For Getting To Know Anyone and Everyone, Margaret Tiberio’s The Book of Self-Acquaintance and Dr. Gregory Stock’s The Book of Questions will get you thinking about what really makes you tick.

I’ve studied assessments (that measure skills, aptitudes, interests, personality, values, etc.) for a couple of graduate courses, and every couple of years, I update an Assessment Review Chart of free and inexpensive Internet-based assessments on A Storied Career’s parent site, Quintessential Careers (it’s currently in need of updating). I also keep a large 3-ring binder with all my assessment results.

I can certainly see that some of the consistent patterns that always show up when I take these assessments — my creativity, intuition, and introversion, for example — could provide food for thought for life-story writing. Did I always have these characteristics? Are they the product of nature or nurture? Do my parents share these traits? My sisters? What stories from my life best illustrate these aspects of my personality? In what ways have these traits helped me in my life? In what ways have they presented obstacles?

While assessments get you thinking about consistent patterns in your core being, the kinds of question books and sites Hamlett recommends are terrific for stimulating your thinking about all kinds of aspects of your life. These questions generally help you get at more specific bits of your existence.

I did a quick Google search using the terms “life story prompts” and saw promising sets of questions at sites like:

• Family History Products
• Memoirs By Me
• A book: 545 Life Story Prompts
• Sample 100 writing ideas taken from a list of 1,000 that sells for $13.95 (geared to students but can work for others).

What assessments or sets of prompts/questions have you found useful for life-story writing?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The day after Thanksgiving is the day that StoryCorps has set aside to ask folks to spend one hour recording a conversation with someone important to them. You can interview anyone you choose: an older relative, a friend, a teacher, or someone from the neighborhood, StoryCorps suggests.

For this National Day of Listening, StoryCorps offers a free Do-It-Yourself Instruction Guide. The organization also has a question list and a question generator for compiling questions to ask your your interviewee.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Recently saw an interesting premise on the blog (called Naming and Treating) of K and J Investigations and Case Management. In a post titled Diagnostic Voices of Community: “control over our stories”, the blogger(s) — Kathy and/or Jeff Gaddess — start by citing the words of New York Times columnist David Brooks:

… unlike the other animals, people … have a drive to seek coherence and meaning. We have a need to tell ourselves stories that explain it all. We use these stories to supply the metaphysics, without which life seems pointless and empty. … Among all the things we don’t control, we do have some control over our stories. We do have a conscious say in selecting the narrative we will use to make sense of the world. … The stories we select help us, in turn, to interpret the world.

The bloggers(s) agree:

… we do have some control in the ways in which we interpret and then project who we are, what we think and feel, and what we have been through. Our stories become us. If we perceive ourselves as victims then this is who and what we will struggle with and be. If we consider ourselves heroic, mostly winning and dominant over adversity, then this sense of self will be the story we tell even if how we see ourselves in this way is not entirely correct.

Inherent in this notion of having control over our stories is the idea that we can change our lives by changing our stories.

I have most certainly known people — some I know quite well in fact — who have wrapped their lives around the story of their victimology and cannot seem to move forward and craft a new story.

I’m at least a bit guilty of clinging to a story that doesn’t serve me well — the one in which I’ve concluded that my contributions will always be undervalued, and I’ll never achieve a certain kind of success.

The other piece of Brooks’s premise — the sensemaking piece — also intrigues me: “We do have a conscious say in selecting the narrative we will use to make sense of the world.” I’m troubled, though, about the large and dangerous faction in the US that presents a false narrative in the guise of “news,” and plays on the population’s vulnerabilities, gullibilities, and especially, fears.

What do you think? Do we have more control over our stories than we do over other aspects of our lives? Do you hold onto a story that’s not serving you? What do you look for in selecting “the narrative [you] will use to make sense of the world”?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I wrote recently about integrating story into LinkedIn and similar profiles, and the same notion applies to the About Us page for your business (or About Me if you’re a solopreneur).

Barbra Sundquist lists four questions that the About Us/Me story should answer for readers/prospective customers:

1. Who are you?
2. What is your expertise?
3. How can that expertise how can it address customer needs?
4. How can customers contact you?

Sundquist also sells templates (at $50 a pop) for such stories (bios), but I’d suggest that unless you are really stuck for how to get started, templates may stifle your ability to creatively tell your story.

A better approach for many will be looking at examples of profiles and About Us/Me pages that tell stories well. I like the one offered by Tim Berry, founder of Palo Alto Software and other ventures, which also incorporates Berry’s business philosophy. Here’s an excerpt:

I’ve seen startups and small business from multiple views. I’ve had the good years and bad years. My wife and I had three mortgages and $65,000 of credit card debt at one very low point, which we survived, but I really don’t recommend. I’ve landed investment from a Palo Alto venture capital firm and bought them back. I’ve consulted with venture capitalists on software startups, essentially kicking tires. I’ve consulted with startups on bringing in venture capital, and angel investors, and business loans, and friends and family.

For nice examples that skew more toward “About Us” than “About Me,” I like the short profiles of Etsy shops at Etsy Profiles. These are nicely concise, and some are more storied than others, but all truly humanize the proprietors of these shops. Here’s a sample:

à la mode was created as an outlet for a lifetime of pent up creative energy. While the business began in 2005, I have been designing, creating, crafting, and dreaming of it as far back as I can remember. I studied architecture and interior design in school. After working for an architect for 2 years, I headed to the non profit world and spent my next 10 years in marketing, pr, and fund raising. à la mode allows me to meld my creative nature and work experiences.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve been writing recently about storytelling for healing and “memoirs-on-the-go” — autobiographical writing in blogs. (And, by the way, here’s a poignant take on a different kind of memoir through social media.)

An article by David Spark on SocialMediaBiz reminded me of a site that brings these concepts together and adds a third concept — anonymity.

Spark writes:

Experience Project (EP) is a unique social network in that it promotes anonymity. Most social networks focus on promoting yourself as a brand and connecting you to your friends by name. EP members are anonymous and are able to connect through each other’s stories. EP is not the first anonymous social network. It’s just the first one I know of that doesn’t have a predefined agenda. With other social networks joining them automatically identifies you as a rape survivor, someone suffering from MS, or some other ailment or a physical/emotional tragedy. While these social networks are all valid and helpful, people are first seen by their issue or ailment. It’s hard to break out of that image and when you overcome that issue, then there’s no reason to be on that specific social network.

As of this writing, anonymous contributors have shared nearly 3 million experiences (dare we call them “stories?”) on Experience Project, which launched in 2007 and describes itself like this:

As the world’s largest living collection of shared experiences. and the premier passions-based network, experience project is a comfortable and supportive place for individuals to share and connect with others around the things that matter to them most. With over 24 experience categories, experience project is the definitive online social conversation destination for people to connect with others who really get “it” — and them.

I’ve actually written about the Experience Project before — almost a year ago, and the site has clearly evolved since that time. While its intentions seem to have remained consistent, the site seemed a tad voyeuristic back then, while now it seems more bent toward helping people with issues realize they are not alone.

Spark interviewed users of the Experience Project about how the site “helped them cope with their concerns.” Anonymity was an important element in this particular healing storytelling.

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.

Storytellers, memoirists, journalers, bloggers — anyone who talks or writes about himself or herself in a public forum — is faced with the dilemma of how much to reveal about oneself.

Penelope Trunk, whom I wrote about not long ago for her brave column on the relationship between her two abortions and her career, has written a new blog entry, “How to Decide How Much to Reveal about Yourself”, which is sort of a misleading headline because Trunk freely acknowledges that rather than agonizing about whether to reveal an aspect of herself, she instead has “more difficulty not talking about difficult stuff,” and by difficult stuff, she means not only the aforementioned abortions, but also, as she writes, “marriage, sex, … [and] running out of money over and over again.”

She then goes on to reveal that she was in one of the towers of the World Trade Center when it fell, one of those who narrowly escaped the building. And then that her parents had physically and sexually abused her, though she has virtually no memory of the sexual abuse.

Trunk’s explanation for why she reveals so much of her personal story:

So what I’m telling you here is that I’m scared of secrets. I’m more scared of keeping things a secret than I am of letting people know that I’m having trouble. People can’t believe how I’m willing to write about my life here. But what I can’t believe is how much better my life could have been if it had not been full of secrets.

So today, when I have a natural instinct to keep something a secret, I think to myself, “Why? Why don’t I want people to know?” Because if I am living an honest life, and my eyes are open, and I’m trying my hardest to be good and kind, then anything I’m doing is fine to tell people.

That’s why I can write about what I write about on this blog.

And when you think you cannot tell someone something about yourself, ask yourself, “Really, why not?”

It could be argued — and one of Trunk’s commenters brought this up — that it is not that difficult to talk about this stuff when Penelope Trunk is not your real name. But Trunk has been transparent about why she uses the pseudonym and what her original name was.

About the list of traumatic and private things she’s written about, Trunk writes, “But each of you has a list of things in your life similar to that, it’s just a list you don’t want to talk about.”

She’s right. But I tend to be more like Trunk than like those who have trouble revealing the difficult stuff. At various times in my life, I’ve written publicly about my reproductive decisions, my alcoholism, relationships, family, and the fact that I was raped when I was of college age.

Why have I written about that stuff, and why do I sometimes talk about personal stuff in this blog? I agree about living an honest life.

There is probably also an element of catharsis — both for me and for my readers. When you open up about the difficult stuff, people know they are not alone. The 264 comments (so far) on Trunk’s blog entry that I skimmed seemed overwhelmingly positive and supportive; undoubtedly Trunk’s story was cathartic for some of them.

For me, there is probably also at least a small element of narcissism. One of the pleasures I get from blogging is the same as one of the highs I used to get from teaching — listening to myself talk — in this case, listening to the writing voice inside my head talk.

What I wish Trunk had talked more about is what happens to you professionally when you talk publicly about the difficult stuff — after all, her blog is Brazen Careerist and usually about career and job-search issues.

Can Trunk talk about this stuff publicly because she is secure and established in her career? I am no longer employed by any entity outside my family, but I still worry about what personal revelations would do to my career. I would still love to teach again someday and am not sure if talking about the difficult stuff would be an obstacle. I even worry when I write about more lightweight, frivolous, and personal things in this blog — like my love affair with a local steer.

I long to write about a traumatic period of my life, providing self-help suggestions along with the narrative to assist others who’ve gone through the same thing I did.

We hear — and I especially hear in the career-management circles I travel in — about “personal branding.” My best friend recently posed the excellent question: How do you strike a balance between establishing a personal brand and revealing too much about yourself?

What does it do to your “brand” to disclose the difficult stuff about your personal story? What does it do to your career?

I would like to believe I live an honest life like Trunk avows. Most of the time, I, like Trunk, ask myself, why not self-disclose? I put myself out there more than most people. But a little sliver of fear — for my career, for my “brand,” for what my readers might think of me — holds me back from full disclosure.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Here I am, once again beating my drum about the “storytelling resume” that I am convinced must someday emerge — and that I believe many signs point to.

I’ve written here about a number of concepts, mostly suggested by recruiters, that signal a desire for the resume to evolve into a new form.

The latest comes from Duane Roberts on RecruitingBlogs.com. Roberts foresees the dawn of the “job-wanted description.”

Now, this is not entirely a new idea. Newspapers have long carried a “Positions Wanted” section in their classified sections. Today, people advertise their cleaning, babysitting, and handyperson services in such ads.

Roberts, who doesn’t suggest that the job-wanted description replace the resume but rather supplement it, provides this description:

Anyone who reads your job wanted description should know immediately what your perfect job looks like. When they read this they should know what you do (and have done) well and how you will succeed in this job. There should be no ambiguity. In this case, you are going to be very specific about your expertise.

He suggests that the job-wanted description would include:

• ideal job title — a role that you’ve done and done well.
• a good summary of what you would like to do.
• background information as to why you are in the market and looking.
• A job-responsibilities section in which you get into specific details.

Roberts didn’t say what this description would look like. Although several comments had been posted, they seem to have disappeared. One comment asked how the job-wanted description would differ from a resume objective statement. I asked what the job-wanted description would look like.

A job-wanted description is counter to commonly dispensed job-search advice not to be self-serving — in other words, don’t tell what the employer (or position) can do for you, tell what you can do for the employer. But perhaps it’s part of the new perspective that social media has brought to recruiting and the job search.

In storytelling terms, a job-wanted description could be a “future story” that would enable an employer to picture you performing in exactly the kind of job in which you would most excel.

So let’s review some of the other story-related suggestions for resume replacements or components thereof that recruiters have hinted at and I’ve reported on:

• Personalization through talent communities
• Social-media resumes
• The VisualCV brand of resume
• Blogs
• Profiles, whether profiles on already existing social-media venues such as LinkedIn or Facebook, or specialized profiles on job and career sites.

Perhaps the elusive Storytelling Resume will incorporate elements from some or all of these concepts.

And one more sign on the horizon, a new site called BriteTab, which will have a beta release this month, claims to be “changing the face of resumes.” Its tagline is “Resumes with Personality.” Virtually no information is available on its Web site, but you can sign up to be informed of the beta release. I don’t know if this concept is related to storytelling, but it will be interesting to find out.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

This week, well-known career blogger Penelope Trunk bravely told the story of her two abortions on her blog Brazen Careerist.

Even more interestingly, she connected abortion to career. The entry’s title is “What’s the connection between abortion and careers?”

In today’s emotionally charged climate, it takes a lot of guts to tell a story like Trunk’s. Not surprisingly, she’s gleaned 335 comments as of this writing.

Trunk says she had her abortions to preserve her career. But she also admits she is not sure her life would have turned out differently had she not had them.

I have known near and dear ones whose abortions were at least in part prompted by that same desire to preserve their careers. I also know one young woman with a thriving career who made the courageous choice to give up her baby in an open adoption.

This week I also watched Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee debate the abortion issue. Stewart admitted that of all the “liberal” positions, his pro-choice stance is the one his feelings are the murkiest on (for the record, I don’t think he used the phrase “liberal positions”).

Stewart pointed out early on that it just doesn’t make a lot of sense for men to debate and make policy on the issue. They are not the ones directly affected.

That’s why it is so important for women on both sides of the issue to speak out — to tell their stories.

I applaud Penelope Trunk for having the courage to tell hers.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

My friend Sarah McCue, co-founder of Read/Share a Story “for women and men of the world to learn from each other for self-discovery, exchange, awareness of other cultures, and development of new friendships through online networking and communication,” just announced a Proust Questionnaire on the site. Sarah is also behind The Remembering Site.

When she mentioned the term Proust Questionnaire a few months ago, it was the first time I’d heard the term. Here’s the origin:

At the end of the nineteenth century, young Marcel Proust was still in his teens when he answered a questionnaire at two social events — one when he was 13, another when he was 20. At that time, it was a fad to answer such a list of questions that revealed the tastes and aspirations of the taker. Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. His answers can be easily found online and show the fascinating maturing of thought and priorities in life. Proust answered the questionnaire several times in his life, always with enthusiasm.

I can’t help thinking about all the questionnaires along these lines that have made the rounds of Facebook of late. Personally, I love both responding to these questionnaires and reading the responses of others. Many Facebookers are not so receptive.

But I think the addition of the Proust Questionnaire to Sarah’s site is brilliant. It’s a way to construct your story.

Here are the questions:

• What is your current state of mind?
• What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
• On what occasion do you lie?
• What do you most dislike about your appearance?
• Which living person do you most despise?
• What is the quality you most like in a man?
• What is the quality you most like in a woman?
• Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
• What or who is the greatest love of your life?
• When and where were you happiest?
• Which talent would you most like to have?
• If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
• What do you consider your greatest achievement?
• If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
• Where would you most like to live?
• What is your most treasured possession?
• What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
• What is your favorite occupation? <
• What is your most marked characteristic?
• What do you most value in your friends?
• Who are your favorite writers?
• Who is your hero of fiction?
• Which historical figure do you most identify with?
• Who are your heroes in real life?
• What are your favorite names?
• What is it that you most dislike?
• What is your greatest regret?
• How would you like to die?
• What is your motto?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.