Thought it would be nice to have a daily lit quote as an entry:

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Fiction is not atop my interests here on A Storied Career, but today, I’m dipping into two fiction-based story projects that have implications for storytelling outside fiction. Both of these are also mashups of fiction and social media.

Erik Hare has launched a fiction project called Mythnology, which he explains here. Here are some excerpts:

Many kinds of truth are best explored through fiction. … Mythnology is set up to be a novel written in blog form. … Each chapter, after the first three, is available only by subscription. I hope to develop a community of subscribers commenting and asking questions which help guide this process through to its completion. This should be a lot of fun as the process of writing a novel (really a novella) becomes a kind of performance art, as the ancient art of storytelling has long been. … The title Mythnology is a combination of Technology and Mythology. One is based on a system of faith where the other has a core of truth in it. … I happen to believe that myths, or stories that illuminate a grain of truth at the core of them, are the strongest connections between people. If a strong society is all about connections between people and people or people and ideas, our faith in technology is certainly going to test us in ways we probably do not understand very well yet. The ancient art of storytelling, or the crafting of myths, is how we usually fill the gaps.

Role Pages is “a fictional, in-character, role-playing social network where you can be anyone that you can imagine.” Here’s how the site works:

Our members include vampires, werewolves, demons, psychics, aliens, and elves. Sign up for an account, and tell the story of your own unique character by uploading pictures, videos, and written accounts of their adventures. You can also role play with our eclectic members, and participate in the creation of elaborate multi-player interactive stories.

Exploring fictional approaches can be an effective way to work through our storied realities.

This blog’s comment function has been temporarily disabled. If you’d like to comment while I’m working to restore it, please e-mail me.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

When I was preparing to enter high school, my father told me I had to take Latin. I was not enthusiastic about the idea. I wanted to take French. My father and I compromised. I would take two years of Latin.

My Latin teacher, as it turned out, was fresh out of college and in his first year of teaching. He was only nine years older than I was (even now in his 60s, he still has a boyish look, as you can see in the photo at right).

And he was a fabulous teacher. Energetic, interesting, and passionate about his subject matter, he brought the allegedly dead language vibrantly to life. I immersed myself in studying Latin with Mr. Rhody, a.k.a. “Magister,” the Latin word for teacher. I was a good student in most of my subjects, but I worked especially hard in Latin and earned excellent grades. As you may have guessed by now, my compromise with my dad proved unnecessary because I eagerly took four years of Latin (I did also take French, but that experience was far less memorable). I enhanced my immersion in ancient Roman culture through involvement in Latin Club and two spring-break trips to Italy. At the end of the four years, I won the Latin Prize, an accomplishment I have always valued more than most (even though I kind of thought my cousin Vicki deserved it more than I did; she earned straight A’s for all four years of Latin, where I had gotten a B in the first grading period because I had mono).

Even after the years of high school, college, and graduate school, David Rhody remains — by far — my favorite teacher and one of my greatest influences.

Not that many students take Latin today, and many schools don’t even offer it. (I would have invoked the same requirement for my two children that my father did for me, but Latin was not offered at their highschool.) That’s a shame. As my Magister taught me, 60 percent of the English language comes from Latin. Mr. Rhody assigned us to keep “derivative notebooks” to catalog the English words derived from Latin. My four years of Latin were an enormous boon to my vocabulary and my life as a writer. A knowledge of Latin helps a person figure out the meaning not only of unfamiliar English words, but also words in any of the Romance languages.

But I digress … I have kept in touch with Mr. Rhody over the (too many) years since high school, and last year, we became friends on Facebook. He has been retired for several years now, but I like to think his legacy lives on just as vibrantly in the classroom (jokingly referred to as the “Latin wing” of our high school) since his successor is one of his students.

A few weeks ago, I received a Facebook friend request from Larry Smith, co-founder of SMITH Magazine, which I’ve written about many times in this space. Larry had noticed we had a mutual friend — David Rhody. Turns out Larry had had the Magister experience 15 years after I had.

It’s fascinating to speculate about whether anything about our mutual high-school or Latin experience led us both to storytelling. In fact, Larry told me Latin class did influence him, noting that he couldn’t remember where his passport was but could vividly remember Hannibal crossing the Alps on elephants. For me, The Aeneid mesmerized me with its storytelling by the poet Vergil.

I have a good chance to learn more about Larry’s Latin-storytelling connection as he has agreed to participate in a Q&A soon.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Tonight I am making my theatrical “comeback,” after not having acted on the stage in some 35 years.

I enjoyed acting as a teenager and thought I was kind of good at it. I always felt I might like to try it again someday. I auditioned for a production of Woodland Theater Productions here in Kettle Falls, WA, in part because I wanted to get involved in the community. Despite extreme shyness, I wanted to cultivate some social life because I feel as though when my husband and I have only each other to interact with, we have the potential to get on each other’s nerves.

I was cast in a small role in one of three one-act plays comprising “Readers Theater,” which is more or less synonymous with a staged reading. Readers Theater usually entails “no memorizing, no props, no costumes, no sets.” In our production, we are using minimalist sets.

I didn’t really think of the production as having that much to do with storytelling until I got an e-mail promoting the plays to the public. It read:

Like storytelling, reader’s theater can create images by suggestion that could never be realistically portrayed on stage. Space and time can be shrunk or stretched, fantastic worlds can be created, and marvelous journeys can be enacted. Reader’s theater frees the performers and the audience from the physical limitations of conventional theater, letting the imagination soar! [These words apparently come from the site above that defines Readers Theater.]

I’m telling myself to “break a leg,” not only for my comeback but for participating in a storytelling activity.

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.

Back in the spring, M. Amedeo Tumolillo, a.k.a., Flying Flashlight, published lists of storytelling tips by three well-known storytellers, the late novelist Kurt Vonnegut, playwright David Mamet, and screenwriter/screenwriting teacher Robert McKee.

While the authors of these tips work(ed) primarily in the fiction realm, these tips work equally well for nonfiction story applications.

Add to those this juicy nugget from Jenny Munn (which reminds me a lot of Annette’s Simmons’s advice for sensory details in storytelling):

The secret is specificity. Give out a few meaty, juicy, specific details and people will remember what you have to say. Here’s an example I got from watching Oprah the other day:

Oprah’s show was on the documentary Food, Inc. and Oprah was spreading the message of knowing where your food comes from. She also interviewed Alicia Silverstone (the Clueless star) who is an outspoken vegan. Alicia was telling the audience what happened to her when she started her vegan lifestyle. She didn’t just say, “I felt better” or “my appearance improved.” Alicia talked about how her brittle nails got stronger and the white marks on them disappeared; how her eyes got brighter and the white parts whiter; how her skin got firmer and her complexion drastically cleared up; how easily she um, had bowel movements. These details gave her credibility and helped the audience engage and understand.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

In an exuberant blog entry called The Chemistry of Storytelling, Marguerite Grant has created an inspiring list that answers the question, “Why story?”

We don’t just buy a product, we buy the story behind it.

We don’t just join a company, we join because of its story.

We don’t just join a cause, we join the story behind it.

We don’t just vote for a presidential candidate, we buy into his story of what the future holds.

We don’t just follow the leader, we buy in to the story behind her vision.

We don’t learn best by hearing a theory or concept, we learn best by hearing stories that demonstrate the concept.

We don’t just see a movie or read a novel, we lose ourselves in a good story.

Based on the fact that we buy stories, it’s not the best product that will sell; it’s the product with the best story behind it. It’s not the best employer that attracts the most candidates; it’s the one who knows how to tell a story through its employment brand.

How have you’ve applied good storytelling in your life?

I especially like the fact that Grant is blogging on the blog of Talent Culture, a careers-related community that offers “the latest perspectives of what it means to find meaningful careers and use them to grow.”

Her statement, “It’s not the best employer that attracts the most candidates; it’s the one who knows how to tell a story through its employment brand,” can be turned around for job-seekers: It’s not the best candidate that gets the job; it’s the one who knows how to tell a story through his or her personal/career brand brand.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Robin Souers (who happens to be my sister) is writing an article or perhaps a series of articles on pet loss and grief.

She’s seeking stories that are more than just facts. “I’m especially interested in the thoughts and feelings people experience when they lose a pet and how they cope,” she says. The stories can concern any kind of pet, and any kind of loss.

Incentives/rewards may be available for stories she uses in the article.

Robin asks that folks email submissions to her.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I exult in uncovering and reporting on online venues that are repositories of stories. Here are three I just learned of:

• Facebook expects to add its 500 millionth user this week and intends to mark the occasion by focusing on user stories rather than numbers, reports Mashable. The social-media behemoth will celebrate by unveiling a Facebook Stories section of the site. Facebook will “sort actual, submitted user stories by location and theme. Theme examples given included ‘finding love’ and ‘natural disasters,’” Mashable reports. Facebook is collecting stories here, and — arrrgghhh! — they are limited to 420 characters each. I could certainly tell a story or two — such as my story of finding my childhood best friend through Facebook, but in 420 characters …?

• The Wing to Wing Women’s Mentoring Project™ is a global volunteer movement that aims to inspire women to reach out to other women and, through the simple act of offering guidance and insight, help them achieve their personal and professional aspirations. The program’s goal is to eliminate negative competitiveness and encourage positive assistance, woman to woman, one woman at a time. One way the project is advancing its goals is by sharing stories by both mentors and the women they mentor. The site collects stories here and shares them here.
• The Hidden World of Girls is a new NPR multimedia series by THE KITCHEN SISTERS exploring the hidden world of girls. Stories of coming of age, rituals and rites of passage, secret identities — of women who crossed a line, blazed a trail, changed the tide. The inspiration behind the series:

  The idea for this series was inspired by reading the obituary of Lula Mae Hardaway, Stevie Wonder’s Mother, a sharecropper’s daughter, a girl forced into prostitution, a teenage single mother whose young blind boy was discovered singing on a street corner in Detroit by Berry Gordy Jr., a determined woman who along with her son, received the Grammy for writing Signed, Sealed Delivered. Hers was a story we knew we wanted to tell. The series was inspired again when we watched a young 16 year old charanga player in an all-girl high school mariachi band competition in San Antonio, playing for the love of tradition, for a sense of belonging and for a scholarship, the first girl in her family to play an instrument, the first to dream of going to college. We knew this was a story we had to chronicle. And when they opened a new beauty school in Kabul, we looked at each other and thought again about “The Hidden World of Girls.” Over the last few years we’ve been collecting small stories, shards of sound, and images that have helped us imagine this series.

  Instructions for submitting stories are here; radio stories can be heard here; and stories can be read here. There’s also a Facebook page for the project.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

American journalist and academic James Borton wrote to me recently seeking assistance with his quest to expand he Center for Oral Narration at the University of South Carolina, Sumter.

Here’s what he asked me to post:

Academic seeks to review sample proposals for digital-storytelling projects, particularly community-based digital-story proposals that may have already been successfully funded. Looking for models that will help in crafting proposals as part of an expansion of the Center for Oral Narration.

Email him to respond.

Borton also authors a narrative-oriented site, All Heart Matters, the mission of which “is to provide a forum for the more than one million heart patients who experience heart surgery annually. We all know that it is a profound experience and a life-altering event. After all, moral questions do ensue about how to live when mortality is no longer a distant cousin, but a real possibility in one’s life. People do need to tell stories to make sense of their lives and so it is through our narratives that we learn to better understand ourselves.”

Borton says: “I welcome your narratives about all matters of the heart.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.