Story is living. Writing is listening.

Write something
list
alphabet
in fog on the window

See that you exist.
Blood magic heartbeat
longing
are beginning middle end

Now while you’re breathing
Now, while persecuting
potential unreached
spoilt sperm

a finish line
deserted with dusk
You exist.
Write something.

Your name
its letters
in sand in song
speak it through the dark

the light will find you.

by Pema Teeter

*

{ 5 comments }

Bridget Pilloud, over at Intuitive Bridge, is hosting “Pick Your Color of the Year –  2012!” for the New Year.

Rosy pink. My color for 2012.

Pantone does it for the designing crowd. Why not those who look forward to designing their lives for the year? And those who revel in the design of a story?

Have you ever thought of it that way? The stories you tell are designed. Like, every story. Describing your day or talking about your passion for helping people. The way your audience receives the account is key to getting the response you’re going for.

Colorful character

My dad lives to tell a good story. The man plans the punctuation in the telling of a tuna melt he had for lunch, “like nothing you’ve had in your life, BELIEVE me.” He drives home that taste with such description, you’re suddenly feeling a little full, yourself.

Bridget’s “Pick Your Color of the Year — 2012!” catches my attention because, like a picture paints 1,000 words, a color expresses a feeling or a condition without using words at all. It expresses a character and a mood.

Your story, whatever it is, has all of those. How will you describe it?

The hue of a mood

Try starting with a color…Let your color be a way into the description. How does your color make you feel? What colors do the characters inspire? In what color would you describe the mood of the whole story?

Pick your story’s color, then add to it. In the same way you’d add to your color in a room, with accents, open windows, and accessories, build on your story’s mood with details: character traits, settings, suspense.

A story flows. A story stops. It starts up again. If you’re stuck behind the telling, pick its color. Let its mood and character tell you where it wants to go.

Know the color of your story’s mood? Tell us about it. Share it in the comments (and come back to tell us where we can read it when it’s done…)

P.S. Thanks to Bridget for the inspiration. Pick your color for 2012 at her very cool blog.

{ 0 comments }

{ 0 comments }

It’s 1998

…and I’m headed to Italy, my first time out of the country alone. In the spirit of my trip, I change my floating-phrase screen saver to Italian: Tutto ciò che cerco è già dentro di me. “All that I seek is already within me.”

I don’t know how it can be true. I’m greener than green behind the ears. Someone said it to me once and I became mesmerized by it. All I can do is repeat it in the sing-song of my newly acquired language, and wait for it to be true.

It’s 2011

If I know anything in the world, I know this:

“All that you seek is already within you.” Every answer, every mystery, every big adventure to prepare for, every story to tell. The elements are all inside. I know this from the uncountable numbers of people I have met on untold numbers of travels. I know it from the hundreds of interviews in which people have told me their issues and together we have sliced through them with one mighty sword: their stories.

It’s the stories. THAT’s what’s inside of us. And inside our stories is the code of our lives. Why? Because we can’t help but to do one thing the way we do everything. And when I listen to you tell me about THE THING you’re working on—creative opus, business copy, marketing plan, acting role, writing project—and then I listen to your stories, I hear what makes you thrill, what makes you special, what makes you afraid, and what makes you grow.

Break through writers block.

Understand your offer.

Find the deeper appeal in your pitch.

Express what you mean.

Organize the fragments of what feels like chaos into your electrified, true-to-heart, true-to-you voice.

You are one whole entity, made up of a million experiences, one big continuous story made up of a million smaller ones, and counting. In an interview, I help you see how the stories align. I help you apply your stories’ relevance to what you’re working on, to magnify, magnetize and fill with heart and life your content.

THE INTERVIEW

…is the forum for our conversation. People get into a Story Charming interview and forget they are sorting information or solving a problem. Their imaginations take flight, emotions bloom and dim corners of dreams light up.

It usually costs $150.

Through Dec 24 only, it’s $100.

Buy now, calendar through April 2012.

You press the button, I email you to confirm and calendar. You or yours gets the gift of creativity, flow…and the answers only she or he has inside. For $50 off.

It’s a lovely gift for the thinker, creator, renegade in your life, who wants clarity where there are cobwebs, or even collaboration where there is a really great idea that needs help executing. For the gifters, I’ll include a personalized gift certificate you can give.

From the Happily Charmed:

You’re a brilliant interviewer! I just ADORE YOU. Thank you for your words. Thank you for SEEING me. Your work is helping me discover myself personally as well as professionally. Thank you for being so open!

Padma Maxwell
www.artofthriving.com

You’re able to abstract meaning from a pile of confusion. You take that pile, remove the nonsense, and bring a sense of clarity to what is so desperately trying to be said. You create simplicity out of conundrum. More importantly though, you find the real meaning and help me pursue those thoughts in a much more substantial and clear way. It’s a pretty incredible gift. I’ve never met someone who can do that quite like you.

Matt Harding
VP Marketing, MasterPlans.com

Pema has an amazing way to translate what’s in your heart into killer marketing words.

Michelle Rodriguez
The Paid Stylist Program

All that you seek is already within you. Get Story Charmed for $100, till Dec 24 only, and let it out.

Buy now, calendar through April 2012.

Ready to find it?

{ 0 comments }

The best and worst Christmas I ever had was the year after my brother died. I was 17. The grief was palpable. My family couldn’t speak to each other. It’s possible it was just me who couldn’t speak. However it happened, I remember the silence.

My step-mom was the hub of a PTA program that provided clothes and shoes to kids who came to school in need, so she was well connected to both families in need, and streams of donations. This Christmas Eve, my house was busy and quiet. My mom had found three families who would not have Christmas that year because they were broke. No dinner, no gifts.

Humble Gratitude

So, two of my high school friends came over and helped me gift-wrap toys and clothes in my room, while my mom and dad and little brother sorted food cans and turkeys and household goods in the kitchen and living room. We had these big long boxes that came with the food we ourselves received on some kind of assistance every month. That night we filled those boxes with presents and food for people we had never seen, three families we imagined in our heads as we prepared for them a Christmas they would not have had otherwise.

Being 17, I was embarrassed, a teenager after all. Would we be robbing these people of their dignity to show up on their doorstep and give them boxes of food and gifts the night before Christmas? Would they hate us because we saw their vulnerability and sadness, and even shame at not being able to provide for themselves?

But we packed into the station wagon with the boxes, and drove to one house, then the next. Three houses, my mom knocked on the door, light poured onto the porch, my dad shook the other dad’s hand. The big awkward boxes went from our hands to theirs. I glimpsed the kids in their living rooms looking out the door at strangers. The moment was short. The mom would hug my mom, all would nod and then we ducked out. No ceremony, just humble gratitude. Deep thanks. And a feeling of riches none of us would have dreamed on the night before Christmas in a poor part of town like ours.

Big as a broken heart

It was over. We drove home. Went to bed. Woke up to Christmas in our house. But our celebrating had already been done. Quietly, diligently, the night before. We were satisfied and filled as full as our broken hearts were going to fill that year. There was something bigger than us, almost as big as the loss of my brother. Receiving through giving. Surviving loss by giving. Giving when we knew there was nothing we could give but a hand to a few families we had never met, but who had fallen on hard times. We had been getting to know about hard times.

I’m here to tell you that even when you think you have nothing, you have something to give. Right now, when the world is gasping in fear at financial doom, right now is the time to give. So, take a breath. Open up. And give. Expand. Radiate.

What will you give?

(Thanks, Mom and Dad for the gift of that experience. It continues to give to this day. Love you.)

–

A longer version of this post was first published on CarrieandDanielle.com in 2008. But I love it so much that it might not be the first time I bring it back.

{ 4 comments }