Experienced Storytellers
I have discovered rather late in life that I enjoy teaching. For many years I didn’t believe I was interested in teaching or being taught. If I needed to learn how to do something, I’d do it, and make mistakes, and then do it again until I could do it well. The thing I most wanted to do well was to tell stories. I loved stories whether I was the audience or the storyteller. Stories brought life into focus, narrowing it down into something knowable and interesting and sharable. I loved stories so much I couldn’t fully understand why everyone didn’t want to be a storyteller when they grew up. Now I find myself teaching people how to tell stories. I wasn’t very good at it at first, but after making a bunch of mistakes I’ve gotten better. One of the first things I learned is that experience is the only teacher. So I say to my students, “Try doing this when you get home.” If they have success, it is because they allowed an experience to teach them something about writing or creativity or fearlessness. I was not so much the teacher as the one pointing them toward what I believed was the best classroom.
Though this is perhaps not entirely true. A lot of what I do when I teach is tell my students stories. A storyteller must leave room in his story for his audience. He must leave room for their imaginations to bring that story to life so that they can feel within themselves the excitement or worry or relief. He must leave room for the audience to draw their own conclusions, to decide who is trustworthy and who is not, to decide who is guilty and who is innocent. Ideally, by the end of the story the audience feels as if they have walked the path the storyteller carved through life’s brambles and thickets.
In this way a story is as close as we can come to two people sharing the same experience. I did not understand until I began teaching people to tell stories that all storytellers are teachers. We invite our audience to experience again the value of love or courage or compassion or peace. We all forget. We get lost down dark paths of our own creation, having told ourselves stories of our wretchedness and powerlessness and vanity. How nice when we find a friend to tell a better story to, a story that can help us forget where we were going and remember who we are.
If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual and group coaching.
Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence. You can find William at: williamkenower.com
