Story Wise Wrap: July 2017

The month of July at Story Wise has seemingly evaporated.  A couple of days at Victoria’s first Creative Summit, another day out that promised to have me speaking my way to success, then school holidays, and whoosh, the month has gone. 

In the background I am working on a personal essay about my years playing footy.  The personal essay is a writing genre that I love.  It combines memoir with ideas, beliefs, observation and persuasion, and in structure is quite similar to public speaking.

Speaking of which, I will be giving a TEDx talk in Bendigo in October, about personal storytelling, connection and ancestry, and so I am in the middle of wrestling this mass of story experience and thinking, into a concise, story filled, logical, informative and inspiring speech! No easy task. 

Both storytelling nights continue to grow and be appreciated by tellers and listeners alike.  I have been struck by a parallelism the nights have to a football match.   Well you may wonder how they are related - it is the unknown and unfolding nature of each story night, co-created by the participants, that reminds me of the unknown outcome of a footy game.  It is how the theme and motifs recur at unlikely places through the night, and how the night becomes a whole new story, made up of stories.

I am really enjoying writing at the moment and want to clear the decks so I can do it as much as possible.  Which means giving up something else, and in the short term that something is podcasting.  So this week will see the Story Wise Woodend Pause Podcast episode and then … a pause, probably until the end of the year.  I will keep recording, dividing and saving stories from the nights, until I, or someone else, is ready to create a season of podcast stories. (If you’re interested, drop me a line).

Until next month, catch the stories as they unfold.

Kate