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The Story Core Project and This American Life, both projects that focus on everyday people, confirm what we should have known all along: ordinary people are fascinating. Celebrity may amuse or interest on occasion, but who would take People Magazine over the story of a wealthy business man who attempts to negotiate a peace deal in Iraq or the way a family copes when one member is diagnosed with cancer?

Storytelling is part of who we are as people. Who doesn’t have a reserve of lively tales to toss into the pot when a good conversation is brewing? I readily pull out my two tales involving unwanted bats in our house, or the time myself and a group of friends followed ambulances to Jerusalem’s temple mount and witnessed the beginning of the Intifada in the fall of 2000.

Fiction certainly has an untouchable place in the realm of the arts and humanities. A skillfully woven tale is a masterpiece to treasure. Nevertheless, our fascination with memoirs and personal essays of late reveal more than our society’s vanity. Through these genres we connect with strangers, enter their worlds, and share their experiences. It’s as if we are living in someone else’s skin.

There is no shortage of these interesting stories, only opportunities to share them. Even if a story is committed to paper and never published, the writer provides an incredibly personal gift for future generations to learn from and share.

Regardless of publishing prospects, every person who has lived has a duty to pass on history, stories, or dare I say memoirs to the future generations. If the story is particularly good and the opportunity presents itself, it may even be worth submitting to a magazine or anthology. Writing down our own stories may turn out to be one of our most important accomplishments while on earth.

The web site Dumb Little Man provides the ultimate link list that will help writers improve their grammar and punctuation. Who doesn’t need a little help in this area?

The paint mixer thunked away while Clint tapped his finger tips on the counter. Don Dunham sauntered out to visit. Boxes of bolts, screws, washers, and bits lined the walls, rattling with Dunham’s heavy foot steps.

Tom lined up a series of color chips at the color center and shuffled them about. He originally planned a purple and yellow theme, but soon found himself drawn to fire engine red and a light blue. An orange chip consistently ended up in his collection as well, but he could not figure out how to incorporate it with the red. It went well enough with the light blue, but he was not satisfied with the orange. Perhaps it was too juicy and punchy for a mountain café.

Violet, cranberry, gray, tan: Tom yanked colors out of their homes, kicking and screaming as they clashed with the hodgepodge of chips down below. He narrowed down his selection enough to know that he didn’t want white or yellow. He also knew that picking a coordinating trim paint was out. Not only was this an excessive expense, he didn’t have the stamina to pick out a slew of nit-picky trim colors, let alone neatly apply them to the wall along straight edges. Continue reading Chiselville: Picking Out Paint

The New York Times has an article titled “Selling Yourself, in a Good Way,” that is essential for every writer and other freelancer to read. Marci Alboher shares her revelation: “I realized that if I did not convey passion and pride about my ideas, how could anyone else?”

While some may worry about promoting themselves for fear of appearing prideful or full of themselves, Alboher shares a conversation in which a self-promotion expert shares, “But if someone says you are good at self-promotion, why is that any different than saying, ‘You’re a wonderful writer’ or, ‘You look terrific’? It probably means that they know what it is that you’re doing and that you’ve done it in an interesting and compelling way.”

Communicating a clear, thought-provoking message is the goal of every author and artist. When we are confident in our work and truly believe others would enjoy it, then we should feel free to send out e-mail updates, hand out business cards, and get our names on web sites and any other place where the public may look.

Below is a writing exercise in which I was instructed to write about nothing for 20 minutes.

The music is pretty, but the dog was zooming through space so fast you could have heard a pin drop on a field of blazing tumbleweed. The dog landed and the aliens were so glad to see him they shooed him away. With music coloring the black universe the aliens zoomed past the dog as he left them in the dust. They couldn’t keep up with his relentless stationary position.

On earth no one knew about this except for those in the know, and no one let his or her eyes breath a word about it. Birds chirped in the morning stillness where the sound of rustling leaves in the wind added flavor to the landscape. Chickens strutted up and across, across and up until they ran smack into the thick wire fence that didn’t surround their imaginary pen that really did exist in the backyard of farmer Jones. Only the pen was in the side yard, precisely in front of her house.

Pollution steamed from cars and factories in the big city, but that really isn’t happening. Businessmen, politicians, and lobbyist said so. The climate changes, but it’s changed before so who are we to say which is better? Perhaps it’s not changing at all, since it’s just staying the same by changing all of the time. And who said there’s a climate anyway? It’s all just weather, weathering away the earth and it doesn’t matter whether or not we like it. Weather changes just like our climate, which probably doesn’t exist.

A truck rumbles down main street, the marvel of man’s ingenious idiocy: a smoke-belching carrier of goods releasing what is bad and carrying goods only half the time, which means it really does little good, but in a world without morals or boundaries we really can’t say what is good or bad and so perhaps the truck doesn’t even exist anyway, just the thing to make the politicians and lobbyist happy.

Newspapers spin off the press, words lining every page, but never leaving an impression. Ink is spilled like the blood of thousands who die from war, crime, and famine, only to be tossed in the trash and forgotten. The papers say all and tell all, but nothing has been said or told. Secrets lie all over town behind drawn curtains and everyone knows. There’s no point in hiding what everyone can find out, but no one will remember so long as it can be forgotten. Words drip on the pages of magazines, shoppers, and books trying to wear out our stony eyes, but reading means nothing because the words taste bad. It all falls apart in the end even if we’ll be put back together some day.

Numbers spin in cash registers, an alphabet of their own that cannot be counted. Cash jumps from hand to hand, meaning everything, holding all value, but never truly worth more than a scrap of newspaper. Money is the one god we part with readily even if we’ve given our lives for it. People rush by grabbing for green, picking up air, and sliding away into everything.