A Storied Career
Kathy Hansen's Blog to explore traditional and postmodern forms/uses of storytelling.
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Analyzing Our Storied Lives
This week NPR presented a two-part piece on “Our Storied Lives.” The text of the story (part 1 and part 2), written by Jon Hamilton, engagingly juxtaposes a preview of an upcoming book by Antonio Damasio with the story of a storyteller trying to make it in Los Angeles after many delays in reaching for his dreams. The Damasio book, Self Comes to Mind, Hamilton writes, is about “how our sense of story influences our lives.” Hamilton characterizes the views of Damasio, a... |
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Tweeting a Storied Resume Over 5 Days
Gabriella Evelina Britth, who offers expertise in concepts, design, and storytelling, has declared in her Twitter profile that she plans to produce “50 tweets in 5 days. A Storytelling Experiment where I will share myself n [sic] my resume. Manifesto: Honest. Ironic. Sarcastic.” (I’m not sure if that’s meant to be “in my resume,” “and my resume,” or something else.) She started tweeting two days ago. Britth had posted nearly two dozen tweets at... |
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Even Proto-Storytelling Can Lure Employees
A few weeks ago, Gregg Morris shared with me a Twitter recruiting video. The blogger who initially posted it, Michael Batistich, had called it a “great piece of storytelling… [that] makes me want to work there.” Maybe I’m getting more discriminating about my definition of storytelling, but this video didn’t quite reach the level of storytelling for me. It’s more about symbols and metaphors. In the video, various functional teams use costumes and props to depict... |
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A Broader Spectrum of Business Novels
I recently recapped the “business novels” I’ve covered here on A Storied Career and then received an e-mail from Omar Adams with a link to 50 All-Time Best Business Novels. I thus realized that perhaps I need to more specifically define the kind of business novel I’ve written about here. I write about novels that employ a story, parable, or fable to convey business principles or lessons. Of course, there are plenty of novels in business settings, but most aren’t... |
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Daily Literary Quote
Thought it would be nice to have a daily lit quote as an entry: if (WIDGETBOX) WIDGETBOX.renderWidget('de2e1b2a-c9ff-4ae1-bf95-01cf18564f66');Get the Daily Literary Quote widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Not seeing a widget? (More info) |
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Permanent Entry: What Story Practitioners are Tweeting
Here’s a little widget with the tweets of all the story folks I follow on Twitter on my @AStoriedCareer account. It’s supposed to have a shell and a nice header. Who knows why it doesn’t. new TWTR.Widget({ version: 2, type: 'list', rpp: 30, interval: 6000, title: 'Tweets by', subject: 'Story Practitioners', width: 300, height: 300, theme: { shell: { background: '99FF99', color: '#ffffff' }, tweets: { background: '#ffffff', ... |
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A Passion for Writing? Time Management and Purposeful Living
I recently read of someone’s passion for writing, and it gave me pause. Writing is integral to my existence, but do I have a passion for it? When people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a writer. I have wanted to be a writer since third grade, when I wrote a story that was published in the school paper. The fact that my father was a writer was a key influence. Since I moved out of the retail and clerical realm, virtually all my jobs have had writing as a key element. I’ve written... |
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Yet Another Story Formula for Job-Hunting and More (Plus: Transferable Skills Stories)
Every time I come across someone’s suggested story formula, I ask myself whether the structure could be applied in job-search stories. Most of the time, they can, and I’ve written about many of them. Here’s another one posed by Marc Stoiber on MediaPost, along with my italicized comments on how each step could apply to a story told in, say, a job interview: Foreboding — a vague sense that something isn’t right: You begin to sense a problem in your workplace that... |
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Airline-Crew Stories in Wake of Stephen Slater Incident
OK, I will admit I’m posting this entry in part because the article it references features my wonderful daughter (pictured). My colleague Barbara Safani compiled this article about the trials and tribulations of being part of an airline flight crew after the incident in which JetBlue flight attendant Stephen Slater decided he’d had enough abuse from passengers and quit his job by sliding down the emergency-exit slide (around the same time as the hoax-but-still-a-good-story video... |
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Many a Truth is Spoken in Fiction
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... |
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Enhancing Storytelling Skills
I know that I have extolled the webinar-presenting prowess of Terrence Gargiulo on several occasions, but I really can’t express often enough how well he puts on a webinar. That goes double when he teams up with Shawn Callahan of Australia’s Anecdote consulting firm. The two had presented an excellent webinar about a year ago, so I was eager to “attend” their most recent production, It’s a Marathon Not Magic: Deliberate Practice Approach to Developing Business Storytelling... |
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My Latin-Scholar Story and a Convergence with a Story Icon
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... |
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Storytelling Ning Groups Are at a Crossroads
Earlier this year, Ning, the site that allowed anyone to create a social network at no cost, announced that it was ending its free service. Administrators (known as Network Creators) of roughly 300,000 Ning networks were faced with either paying for their networks or moving them to different platforms. (See details here.) I belong to several Ning groups and have just begun to receive notices from administrators announcing their plans to deal with this transition. John Caddell, Network Creator... |
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Comments Temporarily Disabled
Not that I get a huge number of comments anyway, but just wanted to let regular readers know this blog underwent a huge spam attack on Aug. 22, so I disabled the comment function. Trying to get it back but having difficulty. If you are champing at the bit to comment, thanks for your patience. |
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Stories of Islam May Help Generate Understanding
I have to admit, at this time of heated debate over religious freedom, that my knowledge of Islam is virtually nonexistent. Although I unconditionally support religious freedom, I admit to feeling slightly uneasy about Muslims. Knowledge is, of course, the way to eradicate uneasiness and fear. In a highly thoughtful essay, The Power of Storytelling: Creating a New Future for American Muslims, Wajahat Ali talks about the exalted position of storytelling and storytellers in early Muslim culture.... |
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How Storytelling Could Preserve Net Neutrality
I have heard the term “net neutrality” for years, but I can’t say I really paid attention to it or even understood it. But a guest posting by John S. Johnson on the site Hope for Film not only explained the term but offered up storytelling — and a free, downloadable communications guide — as a way to preserve it. First, what it is and why it’s threatened: … this principle of net neutrality that allows all sites, services and applications on the Internet... |
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Readers Theatre as a Storytelling Medium
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... |
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Would You Grieve for Virtual Friend You Barely Knew?
Kate Bolick writes for The Altantic about a woman she knew peripherally at a former workplace. Bolick didn’t know the woman well — they worked in different departments — and both of them eventually left the company. The woman later friended Bolick on Facebook, and in fact dominated Bolick’s news feed with tales and photos of her active and exciting social life. Next, the women, whom Bolick calls “S” in the article, embarked on a long-distance relationship... |
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Not to Be Outdone, Twitter Launches Twitter Tales
About a month ago, Facebook launched Facebook Stories to mark the addition of Facebook’s 500 millionth user. Now Twitter is launching Twitter Tales, which the microblogging site describes as “a growing set of articles that highlights creative individuals and businesses from all corners of the world that help make Twitter awesome,” adding that Twitter expects that “the examples of great Twitter use will also likely inspire others to use the service in innovative and interesting... |