TaleCatcher

What you see

I should update you.

On the basis of some storytelling coaching I did with the right people in the Company, I've been given a month's extension, to poke around in an area and find out what stories can do for them. I present on Thursday. I'll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime I'm working on my cv/resume, and trying again to capture myself on one or two pages. That's what poetry is for, getting all of something into a small space, with huge power. I may be a writer, but despite my brother-in-law's trying to goad me into poetic play on FB, a poet I ain't.

This works for me, though.

Flint

An emerald is as green as grass,
A ruby red as blood;
A sapphire shines as blue as heaven;
A flint lies in the mud.

A diamond is a brilliant stone,
To catch the world's desire
An opal holds a fiery spark;
But a flint holds fire.

Christina Rossetti

Piano

I went to London today to run a session on tone of voice for some of our outside suppliers. It was okay, and has given me lots to think about, regarding whether we're going deep enough, and how you get to the next layer.

But an absolute uncompromised pleasure, almost worth the journey in itself, was that on the busy street corner, lunchtime, there was an upright piano left there with the words 'Play me, I'm yours' across it from all angles. And people were. They were stopping in their business suits, putting down their brief cases and lunches, and the piano suddenly burst with songs: classical, jazz, love... people are walking around with music in them, just waiting for an opportunity for it to come out.

Thanks, whoever left us the piano today.

Be like the bird

Be like the bird, who

Resting in her flight

On a twig too slight

Feels it bend beneath her,

Yet sings

Knowing she has wings

- Victor Hugo

By contrast

I've been thinking about the virtues of contrast recently.

I'm not sure where it's come from. I've just finished reading - no, savouring - the best book on writing or story that I've ever read. Robert McKee's Story is not for beginners. It gets to the guts of how stories are developed and how they work. There's no mamby-pamby advice like "write every day", but he goes deep and illustrates character constellations, delineates value systems, and goes to the nature of conflict itself, showing how it develops, deepens, and then destroys.

I love this book.

One bit that really worked for me was about how it can be boring to describe goodness, but describing badness - where you'll find all your conflict, and therefore your character and the rest of the stories - that's what makes your good look better and better. I guess the contrast grows richer.

I'm now reading John Simmons' Dark Angels (another writing book). And I've learned a problem with contrast: the value I place on one thing can seep across, and I can struggle to enjoy the next on its own merits. Making me forget that different is good.

I'm having quite a converstaion with the author in the margins of Dark Angels...so I'm completely engaged, and learning. And using the ideas as well, those that are new as well as those that are refreshers.

It's good to learn.

A different story

I've alluded previously to lots of change going on at work.

I've found myself telling a pretty good story about it. And it goes down well, too, and is making a difference, I reckon.

I wish I'd told it before. A friend was quite down because she'd had a job interview - she'd decided, very bravely, that the new team didn't fit her, and that step out and see what else the future could hold for her. Her first interview was with a team that were pretty relentless, pretty intense, pretty full of themselves from what I could make out. And they asked her what she thought of the fact that our team had been disbanded. That it wasn't about being good to each other anymore, but about showing the company how to improve its processes for the customer. (Still not a bad cause, but too far a stretch for some of us, from where we were before).

She was stunned. She stammered. By her own admission, she blew the interview.

I told her a different story. I tell it again and again:

It's true the team isn't about what it used to be. But we got through. After five years of persuasion, demonstration, illustration, our point got through TO THE TOP, and it's now company policy, globally. We weren't a failure. We were an enormous success story. We've got a lot to be proud of. We need to shout about it.

I'm still winding down my days there, but leaving on good terms, happy to have had the time with them. My big adventure's still unfolding. I'm getting a lot done in the meantime.

And helping all the others see what a contribution we made, along the way, to where we are now.

PS My friend got a better job