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Tell Stories that Matter (Mompreneur Outtake)
Rehearsal for the new course promo video was hijacked by a two year-old. In the spirit of authenticity and because these 44 seconds tell the universal story of what it means to be a mom entrepreneur, I'm posting it as today's #365StrongStories post.
Plus, I'm pretty sure I said it best in this version. The Tell Stories that Matter: Write Online Content that Your Readers Care About course is for the emerging thought leader who wants to connect to their own stories and to their creativity. It's for you if you want to connect to your readers and build your business by becoming a stronger storyteller. This online course will launch in April and I would love to have you with me from the start. Please join the interest list to receiving VIP updates and special pricing. Tell me more
The imbalance of passion. The recalibration of the scales.
Once upon a time, there was a woman, a woman who was also a writer and a business owner and a healer and a mother and wife.
She had wandered in the hinterlands between her various identities trying to root into her most essential, creative self. It was a sweet journey, albeit a scattered one. Most nights she fell restlessly into bed, feeling she’d run a dozen races and sure that she hadn’t finished a single one of them.
But then, in the darkest time of the year, the time we hang with lights and soak with champagne, she heard a call. She was invited to step deliberately into the new year. It was time to bring all the threads together. It was time to embrace a truth she’d long known but often forgotten:
She is a storyteller.
And so, if you happen to have this woman in your digital circles, you have seen the floodgates open. Sixty stories and more have poured from her heart, sprung from her mind, and flowed through frantic fingers. She has dozens of beginnings, middles, and ends to show for herself in 2016.
This writer has never felt so creatively alive.
She is proud. She is weary. She is also afraid.
Though she began this project almost on a whim, she’s not having a casual affair with these #365StrongStories of hers. This project matters and it will endure, she swears it. But at what cost?
It’s time to reevaluate the big project
Ok, enough of the third person (a handy tool to hide behind when emotions threaten to drown out the narrative, but a way to hide nonetheless). I’m standing before you, my generous and supportive community, to say I won’t quit, but I will change.
The #365 project is vital to my mission - walking the talk and showing that it is possible to tell stories that connect with confidence and ease. And yet, flexibility and transformation are just as vital so I can survive and fulfill that mission.
And so, I am further redefining the parameters of this #365StrongStories project.
Not all stories require spell check and copyediting
In this media driven age, it’s obvious that stories do not need to come in written form. Think about it - storytelling thrived long, long humans could write and story will continue to be an engine of the human experience when we start communicating via telepathy.
I’m giving myself to break my stories out of their sentences and paragraphs (and the sizeable time commitment that comes with editing the written word). More than half of the entries in the #365StrongStories projects will continue to be good old stories that you can read with your eyes, but the rest will be video, image, and even art.
In doing this, I am giving myself some creative breathing room. Now, I am liberated to develop the stories and ideas that refuse to be bound by word limits and midnight deadlines. I can go deep and tell the bigger Story when I need to.
I am also being realistic about what it takes to develop a readership for all this stuff. Yes, it really is true that content marketing is 20% content and 80% marketing. I certainly do not have four hours a day to devote to promoting this content, especially when I have a writing coaching business to run.
Tell me what kind of stories fill you up and help you along
In my creative flurry, I think I have occasionally lost track of one of the fundamentals of story: connect with the reader and invite that reader to be the hero.
As I revise the shape of the #365StrongStories project, I am also reconnecting with what matters: you. Please help me do that.
- What kind of stories light you up?
- How do you feel about video storytelling?
- Would writing prompts inspire you to write your own stories (and even submit them to the project?)
- What can't I see about what's working and what isn't about this project that you, dear reader, can see clearly?
Leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments or post them over on the Facebook page.
This project matters to me, and I know that it matters to many readers too. With your help, Strong Stories will fulfill its mission: to inspire a great circle of people to tell stories that matter.
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When Elder Becomes Child by Guest Storyteller Tania Pryputniewicz
Once my father played guitar in a trio. Once he carried me on his shoulders, paired rotors of elm leaves spiraling to land in my hair. He spun with his hands the playground carousel as I gripped silver rails, metronome wand of his body reappearing each pass where I left it. I fell asleep anchored to the rhythm of his voice reading me book after book from The Hobbit to The Song of Hiawatha to The Chronicles of Narnia.
Tania Pryputniewicz, author of November Butterfly (Saddle Road Press, 2014), teaches Wheel of Archetypal Selves Tarot Writing classes and is using the Tarot cards to finish writing her second poetry manuscript about an Illinois commune she lived on as a child.
Never miss a story. Subscribe to the weekly #365StrongStories Digest. Click Here to Subscribe
On Mentorship, Evolution, and a Book We Were Destined to Write
Some stories become so well lived that forget that how you got there is a story worth telling. That is how I feel about my relationship with my mentor and teacher, Eleanora Amendolara.
More than a decade ago a Lyme disease diagnosis brought me to a local healer Sue Fick’s table. Within two years I remembered that I wanted to be a healer too and I decided to join Sue at class. After all, I had become a Reiki master in college and I had long yearned for those superpowers to become real in my life.
That was when the Sacred Center was first woven into my life. Though I followed the signs and made the choice to show up, it all seemed meant.
And that’s the way it’s been as healing trainings evolved to become a Mystery School, as those stones that Eleanora uses became the sacred tools behind Chumpi Illumination. Because I was there at the heart of this organic transformation, I barely noticed that the work was sitting at the core of my life.
In the middle of this journey I gave birth to two babies. I clung to the couch fighting morning sickness, I dozed during my third trimester, I brought along infants to class. There were two growing reasons to say "I'll be back when the kids are older," but the decision to make it work seemed as predestined as all the rest.
Becoming Eleanora’s go-to writing and marketing person seemed natural. Writing a book together seemed like the logical extension of our work together. After all, she had evolved from being a teacher to being someone I knew would be one of the surest guides in my life.
Today, however, it’s time to pause and notice how far this work has come. Please take two minutes to watch this gorgeous trailer for our book, Chumpi Illumination: Gateways to Healing and Transformation.
The Art of the "Self-Focused First Draft"
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.”- Barbara Kingsolver
For years, I sighed with longing when I read this passage by Barbara Kingsolver. How fortunate she was to have such a healthy ego! How privileged she was to be the woman who could enter her writing room knowing that she had the power to author books that would sell. Maybe someday when I grew up I could be so free.
And so, I dedicated myself to looking over my own shoulder for a good five years. I hunched over the keyboard and scanned the web for clues about how to wear just the right chains for just long enough. Eventually, I prayed, I'd earn the right to tell the stories that mattered to me.
Because I thought it was part of paying my dues, I forced myself to choke down the “how to create viral content” KoolAid (even though I distrusted those marketing “gurus” and it killed my writer's soul).
Because I was so afraid of being revealed as a fraud, I avoided “real” writers at all cost. It seemed smarter to maintain a healthy distrust for artists and other free spirits who took Kingsolver at her word and created with wild abandon on the other side of the studio door. After all, they were the lucky ones. There was no use envying them their freedom when I still had dues to pay and chains to wear.
What changed? What made me finally realize that Kingsolver was right and that she is speaking to anyone who feels called to write at any point in the creative journey? I certainly didn’t “make it” using all those marketing formulas and trying to please the crowd. I dropped those chains because I had to.
Finally, I realized it was true: I didn’t have anything of worth to offer if I didn’t uncover the story that mattered to me. I was starving my creative passions and I wasn’t building a sustainable business. I was miserable and my writing wasn't connecting with anyone.
Permission to Write the Self-Focused First Draft
I completely believe that the stories that matter need to matter to you first.
You can’t stop there, of course - not if you want to turn those stories into online content that builds a community of people who want to invest in your vision. But before you start looking over your shoulder and before you start looking into the eyes of the people you want to serve, you must connect to your own stories.
Right now, I am developing a course called the You, Your Stories, and Your Audience. As you understand how to craft stories that matter to the people you wish to serve, you also learn the art of the Self-Focused First Draft.
Your SFFD will evolve into final draft that transforms your readers’ perspectives and compels them to take action. But before it’s asked to do anything so grand it’s rooted in exactly what you have to say. You'll learn that before you can dedicate yourself fully to anyone else, including your reader, you need to practice a healthy selfishness and tend to your own stories.
This course is for emerging thought leaders, especially therapists, healers, and coaches, who wants to build a business through blogging today and develop an online presence that will get them a book contract and big time speaking engagements in the future.