Here’s Tykone. A smidge older, perhaps, than in the book. And lacking context. He was not a lot taller than me, which was part of what flagged me I’d found Tyko.

Yes, I told him why I wanted his picture. I’m sure that contributed to the bemused face (and this is the second one. I barely had the nerve to ask him to take off his work hat, but this was the look I wanted). How many times do you get someone saying (yes, I was squirming inside) “Can I have your picture? You look just like one of the characters in my novel.”

And I totally guessed this guy’s right-age based on Rickard’s story-age.

The light was bad, but I was just glad to see him and get the nerve again to ask for a picture.

This guy asked (which I actually appreciated) if his character was good. And I (not wanting to lie, but also not wanting him to change his mind) said that Rickard tries to be. That his methods aren’t always the best, but he really does mean well.

Which is completely true.

It would totally be a Fear Factor kind of experiment, but I’ve considered bringing my good camera (and an official card/photo release) to the fair this year.  Once I snapped the second guy (all I had was my old iPhone, and the light was dismal) I kept noticing all the fabulous faces around me.  So much more interesting and deep than the stuff you find in a magazine.

And good-looking, too.  I mean, both these guys are good-looking, but I’ve never seen either of them (or their types) in print so I was thrilled to see them in person.

Maybe my natural enthusiasm/gratitude would make other people feel special?

I hope it could.

The only problem, of course, is that no one sees themselves as a supporting character…

And maybe lies is too strong a word, but for ideas and concepts that have nested deep in me (some over decades) sucking life like unrecognized parasites, I’m not sure I can come up with a strong enough word.

Here’s one example:

There’s a lot going around now about making significance for (of) your life, whether it’s Don Miller’s book about telling your life-story on-purpose, Jon Acuff’s blog (no, not that blog), and now in Jeff Goins‘s just-released ebook (the opening story, no less).

The emphasis is on our deeply felt hunger to matter. To “put a dent in the universe.”

But the problem I find (here comes my sexism) is that these words are being written by men, and therefore (again displaying my assumptions) define success in terms of observable achievement.

Activity.

Change.

As in widely observable.

Published.

A Tribe.

Influence.

And yeah! I want those things. But it comes down to the cost.

These men-writers use cost as a challenge (in their sphere, rightly so, I can see where it makes sense). But I see it as a check. A reason to pause.

I discovered this poem last year, and especially with my affinity to Old Tales, I found it a sober warning.

Fairy-tale Logic

By A.E. Stallings

Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:
Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,
Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,
Select the prince from a row of identical masks,
Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks
And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,
Or learn the phone directory by rote.
Always it’s impossible what someone asks—

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe
That you have something impossible up your sleeve,
The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,
An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,
The will to do whatever must be done:
Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.

I feel a deep gravity– a warning from all the Old Tales– when I hear writers (another is Heather Sellers) emphasize the need to commit fully.

Generally I take these as hyperbole, because I like to think the best of people, and I have to imagine that healthy, aware individuals will be divertable from their single focus if the price becomes too high.

And it is the awareness of how high cost can go that keeps me from using that language.

Nevertheless I find myself (embarrassingly) susceptible to the call.

Make a dent.

Do good.

Be noticed.

And sometimes I try to use that emphasis on self as my reminder to focus on something a bit more enduring.

~ ~ ~

There is a story that haunts my memory, and I cannot remember where or when I read it, but some stories have tentacles, and this is one.

In it, the narrator goes in a dreamlike state to some form of afterlife, where he meets a cheerful young man who turns out to be the builder of a sturdy stone cottage.

The narrator discovers that the builder lives on in this afterlife relatively content, along with every other creator of excellence whose work survives in our world. As long as it survives.

The message is that when your work no longer endures, you yourself cease to exist.

 This is further emphasized when the builder points out that his descendents have been repairing and improving the cottage to the extent that eventually (the builder reluctantly accepts) there will be nothing left of his original, and then he himself will cease to exist.

Another point driven home was that his wife, though an excellent cook and baker, could not endure with him because every scrap of food and piece of bread was eaten long ago.

And so nothing remained to endure.

That story haunted me (unconsciously) for years. I eventually traced back my need for a physical legacy to the unrecognized fear and tension I felt upon consuming that story.

And now I have to call it a lie.

It plays on all our (very human and very real) fears about existence, and mattering and making a difference.

But it ties all of those hopes to physical objects.  And dear friends, we are not physical objects.

You do not have a soul, you are a soul.

The people you feed (or provide for) are not fed just physically by the work of your hands.

There are some “fairy tale requirements” that I feel up to facing, but I always hope to stop short of the last two. The people I live with are my first sphere of influence, and if I will sacrifice them to reach a larger audience, how is that not training to sacrifice the next audience for a larger one?

After all, dishonest people are seldom dishonest in only one area of their lives…

I hope this is all theoretical, and of course I’m not accusing anyone of being unhealthy in the pursuit of their goals, but I think it’s important to have multiple definitions of significance, and endurance.

And the reminder that not all of those definitions involve your name being remembered.

Read — Sweet — how others — strove –
Till we — are stouter –
What they — renounced –
Till we — are less afraid –
How many times they — bore the faithful witness –
Till we — are helped –
As if a Kingdom — cared!

Read then — of faith –
That shone above the fagot –
Clear strains of Hymn
The River could not drown –
Brave names of Men –
And Celestial Women –
Passed out — of Record
Into — Renown!

Emily Dickinson

I want influence now, and I read books like these, thinking how I can best apply myself. But at the same time, I don’t want to limit myself to these definitions, or listen to my heart’s accusation that I haven’t done enough, or tried hard enough when things don’t go as I hope.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but there will be times when everything we can do is not enough. There will always be more to do– even if we can’t do it.

And while the voices around me say it’s because I don’t want it enough, that’s the lie. Some things really. aren’t. possible.

And that’s what I don’t hear anybody saying– nobody encouraging, anyway.

I will never be 6 feet tall. Ever. No matter what I do.

But I can take joy in that, knowing my Creator, and resting in the truth that fulfilling my purpose will have no need of my being tall.

I can strike all tallness-required purposes from my playbook. They don’t apply to me.

Yes, there are some people who need the You can do anything! cheerleading, but here’s what I need to hear, and I offer it to you too:

We all have things we were called NOT to do.

Ability is not calling, and (by the kindness of God) it is not requirement.

Being the best we can be is not the same as being everything we could be.

I was playing with the idea before I knew it was real, then Google informed me it wasn’t all in my head.

I’ve switched noveling focus, from Lindorm to Shadow Swan (I imagine I’ll get a page up for it, next), while I wait for more of the complex issues of the first novel to settle.

That’s one cool thing about noveling around a busy life: confusing stuff often works itself out with time, so I re-engage with as much a sense of relief (at new discovery) as of guilt (at my neglect).

Shadow Swan is based on the Russian epic poem Tsar Saltan by Alexander Pushkin.

Here we have another multi-part story with loads of traditional folktale elements (the three siblings, with the youngest “winning”; transformations; talking animals; magical gifts; epic “misunderstandings”) and especially the great images. The best stories beg to be illustrated, and make me wish I were a visual artist.

~

I first played with this story (eventually working up to about 14,000 words) in the summer of ’05.  I thought that number fairly impressive (though I stopped working on it) until my first NaNoWriMo in November of ’06, when I galloped past that mark on day 8 or 9.

It really helped my perspective. Until you’ve done more and bigger, there’s no reason for 14,000 to seem small. But now that I’ve cut *thousands* of words from my (still) 100,000-word novel, I have a very different perspective on word-count:

14,000 is worth celebrating, but it’s not enough to tell this story, so it’s not a stopping point.

Anyway, I’d been reading about industry trends in the year before I tried NaNo again, and while fantasy (roughly defined as stories with magical elements) is still very popular (i.e., selling), in the YA market these tend to be stories happening in our world.

That is, “ordinary,” modern children/teens from Earth contend with or participate in magically-influenced adventures (think Harry Potter) more than adventurers or “ordinary folk” take on danger in other worlds and times (think Eragon or Lord of the Rings).

These latter are two very popular examples, and show there are clearly readers out there, but the article I’m referencing was discussing ‘trends.’

Well, I had already written one from the latter category (Lindorm), so I was interested in trying out the other kind.

Now, as a fairly literal Bible-reader (by this I do mean both that I am fairly literal, and that I accept the Bible pretty much as-written) and Christian, I am stuck with that (uniquely?) Christian challenge of writing a story containing magic, when the Bible prohibits sorcery.

One writing/Christian friend of mine says this made her consciously choose Science Fiction as her genre: iNtuitive types like us prefer speculative fiction; she’s not into horror, and didn’t want to deal with the theological questions of magic, so that left SciFi.

Easy peasy.

I dealt with the question at first mostly by ignoring it, then, thankfully, came across thinkers and writers who articulated very well my own (albeit foggy) justifications.

The short version is that I (like Lewis in his Narnia stories) mostly confine magic to a non-Earth realm,  and while it might stretch a little, magic used in unsafe ways is always by negitive (bad guy) characters.

It becomes a metaphor for power in general, and thereby shows my feelings about power more clearly than my feelings about magic: namely that  it isn’t something that healthy, humble people take on themselves, collect for themselves, or use just because they can. And it has the tendency (no matter its origin) to corrupt.

Shadow Swan is about a princess, rescued from another world and brought to our Earth, only to find that rescuing is not the same as restoring, and that danger has followed her.

My original description is here, and sometime soon I expect I’ll create a page for Shadow like I did for Lindorm.

Here’s my “life activity list” the list in roughly the order of time consumed:

~ 1 ~

Managing the food.

It still feels weird to say this takes the most time.

I think this is because– judging by our stories: novels, movies, anecdotes among friends– food is invisible.  It just happens. I wish I lived in that sort of house/body. But I don’t.)

~ 2 ~

Managing the household and extras

Technically this ties back into the food, since food makes dishes.

Basically anything I have to wash clean or put away, along with the animals and outdoor work.

Now that the snow’s melted I am discovering all sorts of new work…

And honestly, it’s a toss-up about whether #1 or #2 takes more time.

~ 3 ~

Teaching the kids.

Reading, writing and arithmetic are the emphasis, but we also read novels along with books of science, history and whatever else strikes our fancy.

As I have more energy I also hope to do more management-training (items from the previous categories).  Currently I do most of that stuff because the *extra* required to get someone else into doing certain jobs is the extra I don’t have.

~ 4 ~

On-line Stuff.

Reading and writing and listening to music on-line (YouTube). Keeping up with some TV shows on Hulu (Castle, Bones, and Body of Proof).

~ 5 ~

Off-Line Stuff

Reading and writing and listening to music not-on-line.

My current goal is to swap these last two categories in terms of time.

I’ve had a surge of progress on my 2010 NaNo novel, and taken on a reading challenge that has forced me to look hard at what and why I read. I hope it will inform what I write.

~ 6 ~

Fiber work

On the edges of my life (and usually away from home).

I have the knitting I do a couple hours every Sunday morning (during the sermon and Sunday school), and the hand-spinning I do when I’m going to be semi-on-display.

That is, sometimes I feel like being invisible, and don’t want to talk with anybody, and other times I’m interested in conversation. Handspinning is a painless conversation-starter with interesting/interested people, and it warns away folks who are busy or would be put off by uncommon, saving us both some awkwardness.

~ 7 ~

Finally there is the music (guitar, piano and singing) that I do for quiet space in the house or– here’s an embarrassing truth– when I’m acknowledging or fighting off the tendrils of depressive feelings.

I think it has to do with my moderate level of accomplishment in my instruments, and the deep familiarity of homemade music: it simultaneously roots me, and reinforces (if I play a familiar song) my competency in this specific, measurable area.

It also helps that most of the songs I learn speak directly to my heart and needs.

My Yoke is Easy by Dennis Jernigan contains the lines, as if sung by Jesus:
Heavy laden won’t you bring your load to me
If you’re weary worn and tired of trying
Come and learn of me
Did you know that all you’re longing for
And all you’re dreaming of
Can be found in me, my child,
For I am Love

I find that working on music is very like memorizing scripture; when you are working on specific technical elements, repetition can be fascinating rather than mind-numbing.  The perception of incremental improvement becomes the encouragement for each new try.

~ ~ ~

What I love about this list (and part of the reason I made it) is to remind myself of what I *am* doing. And doing “good enough.”

My biggest pain in looking at weaknesses (or goals I have yet to meet) is that I begin to define myself by those things that are most likely to discourage.

Rather than putting energy I don’t have into creating of something out of nothing (Habits! Strength!) it seems more healthy to consider I’m already doing, and then measure improvement in terms of changing ratios.

For example, reading more novels rather than online articles. (Current goal.)

Reading aloud during arts & crafts time rather than blogging. (The opposite of today) ;)

~ ~ ~

Last night I sold four of my growers– two month old meat rabbits– to a man lately returned to Alaska. He was nearly Santa Claus in appearance, with all the confidence of pleasantly established age, and it was no trouble to talk with him, exchanging advice and experience (though at times it felt a little one-sided, it was comfortable enough).

When we got to the managing of dead bunnies (skinning, gutting, finishing the meat for storage) he asked what I did with the skins. I responded that I’d not been able to find alum by the pound, but someday I plan to start home-tanning the skins to develop a pattern and make fur-bears for the tourist market (I made bears in high school and loved it).

Very seriously the man looked down at me (he is much taller than I) and said, “You’d better grab that someday and get it closer or it will always stay *out there* and never happen!”

I smiled, sadly, maybe, but couldn’t deflect his surety. Finally I explained myself: “I’m writing some novels and teaching my children. Skin projects just don’t fit in my life right now.”

And I’m sure he (an apparent bachelor) doesn’t understand that’s not an empty excuse; but I’ve evaluated, and reevaluated my priorities so many times that I really believe I’m living the life I’m supposed to. I don’t fault him for the warning, but ‘someday’ has been a great comfort for me; it saves me from feeling I have to close a door completely. It’s a way of telling myself I won’t have to say no forever.

And that helps me focus better on now, as narrow as it sometimes feels.

This week I’ve been hauling feed bags, carrying loads of straw, and shoveling chicken poop. I’ve joked with people that I’m getting fit the old-fashioned way– though manual labor. And I have had that tired satisfaction that comes from muscles used correctly without overdoing it.

And I had the weird experience yesterday of getting in bed for a rest and shaking worse after an hour horizontal than I did before I laid down.

I think I get the biological element of that: Most bodies can give more than we expect, especially when there’s a real need. But once those same bodies are taken off *imperative* status, the reality of physical limitations becomes unignorable.

Getting half or two-thirds the amount of sleep my body needs will catch up with me. Using muscles to exhaustion will mean an enforced time of rest before they will be effective again.

And this is so reassuring in my mothering, because I’ve often got this voice in my head insisting, But look what you haven’t done yet! And that voice is not lying or saying anything that is impossible or even that I’m not good enough.

At times it’s even this sweet little, Oops! I’m sure you didn’t mean to forget, since we both know it’s so easy if you’ll just get started…

I had four hours last night without kids. (Mom picked them up after dinner to spend the night.)

I could have (in theory) gotten a lot done on my messy messy house. But I was physically empty. And I knew it.

I could have (in theory) gotten a lot done on a novel, or another writing project. But I was about 8-hours in the hole sleep-wise, so connections and focus just were not coming.

So I rested.

I sat with my sick goat (I think she’s been pining for human contact. She’s gotten better with more attention).

I listened to music.

I looked at my novel, and there was a moment (of deep relief, I must say) when things finally began to click and I was able to give it a solid hour of productive attention.

But all that was after rest. Nothingness in measurable productivity.

~ ~ ~

I’ve decided that my desire to write isn’t just (or even really) an indicator that running a household isn’t “enough” for my “personal fulfillment.”

At this season of my life, it is largely an indicator of fatigue.

I like to work. I love to see things *completed* or progress made. But I have to rotate, to cycle through the different muscle groups. Just like arms or back or legs, focusing on one thing wears it out faster. And using them all means greater endurance (usually) but also demands a fuller rest in the end.

And this awareness gives me a new respect for my need of rest. Rest for more than just my body.

“It’s this simple: you and I have an inescapable need for rest.

The lie the taskmasters want you to swallow is that you cannot rest until your work’s all done, and done better than you’re currently doing it.

But the truth is, the work’s never done, and never done quite right. It’s always more than you can finish and less than you had hoped for.

So what? Get this straight: The rest of God – the rest God gladly gives so that we might discover that part of God we’re missing – is not a reward for finishing. It’s not a bonus for work well done. It’s sheer gift. It is a stop-work order in the midst of work that’s never complete, never polished. Sabbath is not the break we’re allotted at the tail end of completing all our tasks and chores, the fulfillment of all our obligations. It’s the rest we take smack-dab in the middle of them, without apology, without guilt, and for no better reason than God told us we could.”   

-Mark Buchanan, in The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath (via Laura Ziesal)

So, here I go into the rest of the day, continuing to let many things I could be doing just hang. And I am inexpressibly thankful to even have  tasks that can wait. And I feel joy too, because I am being obedient by resting, which means (and I almost get choked up thinking about this) My rest is worship.

My restoration brings God glory, just as my service does.

Currently I am reading three books:

• The Midnight Disease by Alice Flaherty (a book about the way the human brain works related to the various aspects of application and frustration reflected in writing and not-writing)
• Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan (a book– so far– about epigenetics and how food functions very like programming code being written for the DNA/genes to run.)
• You’re Already Amazing by Holley Gerth (a book with a very ‘girlfriend’ tone that urges the reader to look very closely at herself and at life in the light of scripture).

Can I just say right here how much I love synergy?

I might (I doubt it) have finished one of these books already if it was the only one I was working on, but then I would have missed all sorts of interconnected gems.

Tonight I used something from the Midnight book with Natasha.

There are times she gets really *tight* about something and she can’t let it go. Just tonight for example.

“It’s happening again Mommy!” (I can guess she’s a bit regressed when I hear Mommy. My least-favorite title.)
“What’s happening?”
“I’m scared KNIDS are going to come and eat Elisha!”

And I have to try not to roll my eyes if the lights are on.

I really wonder if this started out as a game, or sleep-delay tactic, but whatever the origin these fears are now full-on terrifying to her, and just plain irritate me.

As anyone with fearful children will tell you, reassurances and discussions (or lectures) of reality are no use in these situations.

So I did an extemporaneous mini-lecture about perseveration.

I explained how a person whose brain has been damaged in a particular way will perceive something accurately, but then see only that. You show him a fork, ask him to name it, and he’ll say fork.

But then you show him a spoon, a knife, a toy truck, and each of those will also be called a fork.

The way to break this cycle is to draw his attention away from the idea for a moment:

A loud noise outside, or a family member walking into the room, will let the fork leave the center of his focus long enough for him to correctly name the new object.

Stapler.

But this merely shifts the problem, as everything now is identified as a stapler.

The point is, I told Natasha, You can use the same idea to shift your thoughts. If you let them go.

*Too* many times, she has come out to us in the living room sweating with anxiety. I’m convinced she rehearses the fear all her steps out to where we are, so whatever it is is only amplified, not relieved, by travel.

“Imagine your thoughts are a bouncy ball,” I suggested. “Right now, your ball is on the purple elephants step [She laughs]. If you want to quit thinking about purple elephants, you should try a shift of some kind. Go get a drink. Use the bathroom. Climbing down the ladder will give your brain a chance to bump the ball off the purple elephants step. AS LONG AS you don’t keep it there.”

I made a cage with the fingers of one hand over the palm of my other hand.

“If you don’t let it move, it won’t. Give it a chance.”

All these words were delivered with my end-of-the-day, how-much-of-this-is-useful-and-how-much-is-just-delay-? pseudo-conviction.

Jay took the kid-calls that came in the next half-hour, till Natasha bright-eyed and grinning tumbled into the living room.

“It worked! See, I was smoothing my hair, then thought, I bet I could make a pony tail–”

“This is a morning-story,” I interrupted. “You belong in bed.”

She backed away, grinning. “And it worked, Mama,” she finished. “Your idea of getting down worked!”

And she took herself back off to bed, tear-free.

Fear-free.

So, with this in mind, yesterday I engaged my imagination as if my real life were a novel.

That is, I threw back to my earliest memories (sorry-in-advance to the loving adults in my world; this is not a reflection on you) and looked for concrete things that made me feel less, to feel insecure.

This was genuinely not a pity party. I was looking for specific ways I might be missing to affirm and encourage my kids. I think it could be a useful tool for any parent, I just applied it first in my writing, because that’s where it came naturally.

We had just had a tragedy that resulted in Melody *certain* she needed a band-aid, and as I did not share her certainty, I delayed my verdict to finish my task.

As I wrapped up, I had this memory of feeling completely useless.  Unnecessary.

All my life– including now– I have been surrounded by amazingly competent people.  And all my life– including now– I’ve had a painfully accurate awareness of how small my contribution is in ratio to the needs around me.

*Unnecessary* is a terrible thing for any child to feel.

I was on to the next project before I remembered I’d gone soft and decided to get a band-aid.  So, stopping when Melody walked by (and secretly hoping she’d noticed the interruption so I’d get Attentiveness points) I invited her back to the First-Aid basket where we bandaged her wound.

Her delight was completely worth the band-aid, and I wrapped her up in a full-body nesting-hug. “I am so glad you’re my girl,” I told her. “I need you so much.”

Melody often talks so loud her voice hurts my ears, but this time, when she rolled deeper into my hug, wrapping her arms around mine, she carefully modulated her volume.

“I love you, Mama,” she said, stretching to be closer to my ear. “I love you… like meat loves salt!”

And tears sparked to my dry eyes.

We like to read a folk tale built around how perfectly deep and strong a full heart of love is expressed in those four words. And I was affected by her delight in using them.

I never felt, as a child, what I saw on my little girl’s face: the confident assurance that I had said exactly how much my mom meant to me.

I may not be my ideal of mama, (okay, I’m just plain *not* ideal), but sharing the fullness of delight at knowing exactly what to say– seeing that my 7-year-old felt her full heart completely expressed– I felt an ineffable *gratitude* that God is using these stories I’m so drawn to, *exactly* for what I want them to be.

They give my kids what they wouldn’t have any other way: a shared vocabulary. Words, images, shorthand, metaphor.  My language.

Back when I used to have more opportunity to advocate for baby signing, I would often hear someone ask, “How is this useful if only the people at home understand them?”

I would counter with the question of how many outsiders understand the early language of any child, even if it were spoken.

What I didn’t latch onto then, what is so huge to me now, is Who cares about “outside”?! The child feels understood!

My absolute favorite friends (yes, I have favorites) are those who will let me tell the story that give a single line *meaning*.

What I’m finding with my kids is that we are building meaning together.

I can be sorry more people don’t share the nuance (I am) but that doesn’t mean I will stop spinning this web that connects us more and more.

It circles back to my instinctive position that stories are my mood-stabilizers, and my children’s emotional education.

And really, they’re my emotional education too, and my kids’ stabilizers.

For a long time I was embarrassed to talk about what a big deal stories are to me. After all, some very capable and healthy people seem to get by without them just fine.

Another example of unnecessary.

But they weren’t unnecessary to me.  And as I watch my kids take in stories like milk, meat and ice cream, I see one more reason I’m their mom; these stories are necessary for us all.

There should, of course, be many stories in between these extremes, but once you’ve had both experiences, you will better be able to set what you read on the spectrum.

Loads of stories aren’t stop-your-heart or change-your-life amazing, and that’s okay too.

You might compare stories to homemade dinners: one day you manage to recreate the best meal you’ve ever eaten in a restaurant. It’s just as good as you remember, and everyone loves it.

But everyone loves meatloaf, too; and pizza, and grilled-cheese sandwiches.

(Actually, I’ve never really liked grilled cheese sandwiches, but my kids do, and they’re easy to make, so I do.)

Sometimes you pick a story for someone else, like I give my kids grilled cheese, and as long as it’s a gift of love, that’s fine too.

The main thing to look out for in such situations is that you still invest in making the story as good as it can be.

What you can’t get out of, get into wholeheartedly.
Mignon McLaughlin

Some of you might have a story you are afraid to tell because you love it so much. You keep it at arms-length for fear that the beauty of the story will be sullied by the “over exposure” storywork involves.

I used to avoid my most beloved stories, for fear they would loose their magic, knowing if I ruined them for me that I would keep my listeners from knowing the stories’ power.

I couldn’t bear that.

The best answer I discovered is from the book Jane Eyre.

I was for a while troubled with the haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade–the sweet charm of freshness would leave it.

I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem.

Love “always protects,” and if you love a story enough to want to protect it, you deserve to try telling it. The best stories, like the woman Rochester loved, prove that what is most worthy of affection will endure.

~ ~ ~

In the end, you do just have to pick one.

Pick a short one, if that’s what you need to build confidence, just don’t settle for anything you can’t put your whole heart into.

By short I mean less than five minutes. Far less is also fine.

The most practical advantage to a small story is that, taking less time to tell, it may be physically rehearsed more times than a longer piece in the limited window storytelling may currently hold.

Just three parts:

• To start with, you need to choose a story.
• Then, you need to get it inside you somehow.
• Finally, you need to get it out again, into someone else.

That’s about it.

For some of you that’s all you need to get to work.
I applaud you.
For the rest of us, the following posts will dig a little deeper.

Picking a story is nearly as complicated for me as the other parts, but just finding stories to choose from doesn’t have to be. Here are some on-line links and suggestions of stories that I have found useful.

Anything you’ve heard “a million times” is a completely legitimate option.

• The Three Bears
• The Three Billy Goats Gruff
• The Three Pigs
• The Little Red Hen
• The Gingerbread Man

(Please tell me you know these. If you don’t, well, that’s no shame of yours, but please find a copy of My First Oxford Book of Stories and catch up on a few staples of Western culture.)

All of these stories have been “tongue polished” for hundreds of years, and the repetition (with a natural rhythm and building of tension) can help any teller pick up on the patterns that aid in remembering how the stories go.

If you want to do something a little more complex, I still recommend sticking with traditional (no single author) tale for your first effort.

Mainly because I’m thinking for down the road; if you start from scratch, the story is yours forever (you’ll never have to worry about copyright issues.)

That’s all I’m going to say about copyright for now, but there you go.

Collections of folktales will open your experience to a variety you may never have seen before, and I highly recommend picking up a few collections to read in a large chunks of time (like you would a novel) as well as one  story at a time.

• The books published by Pantheon are my favorite, bar none. I’ve collected as many as my used-book stores have offered up
• The Color Fairy Books by Andrew Lang contain the prejudices of their era, but have also stood the test of time– continuing to entrance with the magic of their stories despite the obvious dating of the language (and because of their age the whole collection is available in various cheep-to-free forms; I paid $2 to get an indexed copy for my Kindle. So worth it.)
•  I’ve found the questionable elements easy enough to clean up if the story core is solid.
• The Arabian Nights Entertainments are also online and searchable,
• Indexed, online folktale links  are also fascinating to browse. If, for example, you want to try a Beauty and the Beast variant you can go directly to that section and read several to compare and contrast. Depending on the topic, many tales are just a few paragraphs long but still convey a full story. Those are terrific examples of the efficiency of folktales.

In short, there is no lack of options as you move into the first step of basic storytelling: deciding which of your discoveries to spend the next chunk of your time on.

Story is not a cute (or obscene) something someone said.  It is not a physical object.

A story has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Becky is always quoting Donald Miller’s definition at me:

A story is just a person that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.

Antoinette Botsford, in a workshop here in Fairbanks some years back, offered a memorable formula with the letters P.P.P.O., asserting this (short list of four elements) is the test to distinguish a true story from a mere anecdote.

An anecdote can be entertaining and can be valuable, but a group of words is not a story unless it contains a person, a place, a problem and an outcome.

 The basic story formula I heard James Scott Bell use  is:

Chase a man up a tree. Throw rocks at him. Get him down again

My main problem with this format is that I never could figure out why someone would end up in a tree, just to get rocks thrown at him.  So I’m always looking for motivation or reasons behind the “had to happen for a plot-point” stuff.

Could be why I’m drawn to folktales, to expand or find the why of what is required within that story.

Ultimately, I think a real story is about change.

It may be growth or atrophy, hard or harder, but if the characters are all the same as they were in the beginning, we have not experienced a story, just a storm.