I’m excited about a lot of things. That’s kind of my M.O. Storytelling-wise, I’m going to make a list of things that excite me.

Books about writing and the creative process that are actually really amazing:

• Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
  
• On Writing by Stephen King
  
• The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
  
• Draw it with Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment
  
• Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University

Stuff that’s great

• The Believer
  
• The Paris Review interviews
  
• Radiotopia
  
• McSweeney’s
  

In Minneapolis, I’m looking forward to following Spinning Stories as it develops. For myself, I’m excited to move into radio, producing stories that use elements of the classic radio drama to elevate personal stories to a whole new experience. I’m also excited about being in Fringe for the first time in a group storytelling show called “Invisible People,” alongside Amy Salloway, Michael Merriam and Christy Marie Kent. I’ll also be doing a two-week artist residency at Elsewhere, a living museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. And I’m excited to go swimming in a lake soon. 

I think I’ve learned more from telling stories on stage than I have from all the fantastic writing classes and books on writing that I’ve read. Not that those classes and books weren’t useful or don’t continue to be useful. There’s just nothing compared to being alone with yourself on stage. This is why I think every writer should try performing at least once.

This leads to my first trick of the trade: tell your stories out loud. Whether you have dreams of becoming a performer or not, telling your stories out loud is the best way to puzzle out what they are. You get to answer these questions:

• Why am I telling this story? (which leads to…)
  
• What is this story about? (which leads to…)
  
• What is the best way to tell this story?
  

Once you’ve answered these questions, then we can get into the mechanics of what makes a story work. I truly believe in this quote from an article published over at The Millions: “Start the story as late in the action as you can, I tell my students. Make sure your protagonist wants something, even if only a glass of water.” Let the action and the tension guide you through the story and what it means. To me, this is a more interesting version of the old “show, don’t tell” rule in writing. Let the story speak for itself with action and vivid characters.

In the summer of 2006, I was 20, a junior in college majoring in Liberal Studies, and working at an Early Childhood Education Center. I studied mostly fiction and journalism and French. I had written for the school newspaper – profiles and concert reviews – and I had just taken this crazy class called “The Elements of Story.” It explored story on a micro level, right down to the way jokes work, and I felt something ‘click’ in me for the first time. The final project was to perform a story in front of the class without notes. This was before I knew what The Moth was and the experience was exhilarating and left me wanting more. I’m from Portland, Oregon, and I was having a hell of a time trying to find people and events that challenged and inspired me. I started volunteering at KBOO, the local community station, but all they had me doing was writing radio copy from AP wire stories. I decided to move to Montreal.

I knew a girl there via the Internet. She wrote an incredible livejournal that I followed religiously. She posted pictures of spiral staircases, told stories of trudging through snow to see a French movie at the corner art house cinema, and lived with her black cat Minou (‘kitty’ in French). She had come from New Jersey and gone to French immersion in Chicoutimi and now lived in Montreal, speaking French, sipping lattés, and going to festivals. From reading her journal, I knew she hosted friends from around the world who read her blog. I emailed her and asked if I could come in two weeks and stay indefinitely. She said yes. I bought my plane ticket and gave my two weeks notice at work the next day.