YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU DO NOT KNOW
Sunday, my final day in LA and at the conference has already arrived and my focus has switched from one of the business of writing to one of art of writing.
After another restless night due to the flow of creativity in my veins, my friend and I headed over to the conference sight with all our luggage in tow. The feeling in the air of the venue was lighter – probably due to the fact that many of the participants had already headed out of town. I guess many attendees only came in on Saturday for the pitch slam with all the agents – hoping to score it big as the new undiscovered author discovered. What a shame for there were so many great speakers at the conference that poured their hearts out in order to share the art and craft of writing.
After attending Nina Amir’s How to Blog a Book where I once again confirmed for myself that I am definitely on the right direction for my blog and my book(s), I moved on to the focus and intention for my last day: the craft of storytelling.
While I will save you the small intimate details I learned that morning that I am still trying to decipher for myself (yes there is so much more to storytelling then what one would think), I will share this with you: it is important to realize you do not know what you do not know.
What the heck does that mean?
A LOT.
This could be applied to any area of your life. In short, of course we cannot possibly know everything there is to know about everything there is to know. Our limited capabilities ensure this. And I believe our subconscious minds also ensure this.
So how do we get around this? By first consciously making note of it, bringing it into the light from the darkness…and then seeking out what it is we do not know.
For me in relation to writing, I began to see by the end of Saturday this “not knowing what I did not know” was how to structure a great story. I have to admit that this did involved swallowing a bit of my own pride (not sure where that came from, but sure enough it was there) and to be open to asking questions that would expose my lack of knowledge about the subject. I was surprised to find that people were not judgmental nor harsh (why would they be Holli?), but encouraging while pointing me in the right direction…one of which was my next workshop session: Storytelling Excellence through the Avoidance of Mediocrity.
While sitting in Larry Brooks seminar about mediocre versus excellence, I realized that there was a lot that I did not know…and that up until this weekend I really did not have a clue that I did not know what there was to know about storytelling. That just like a house has structure and a foundation that we take for granted, the most well loved stories and movies also have an “invisible” structure that is driving us deeper into the story to become emotionally involved in the telling of it.
With just this 60 minute session I began to realize that why the “Just keep writing, just keep writing” (sung in the same tone as Dory from Finding Nemo sang “just keep swimming”) does not work for me: I had no concrete structure or even knowledge of structure by which to write. The more I kept writing this way, the more I kept going in all directions and realizing the more books I could come up with. Of course, as a person with a highly developed analytical and reason side of the brain, having a structure, a format, a blueprint for how to make a story makes complete sense.
While this writing-by-the-seats-of-my-pants method might have been a good deviation for a bit, I am now convinced that I need more training and knowledge on how to not just be a good writer and author, but on how to become a storyteller.
My goal is to learn how to become a great storyteller…one in which even my personal life and the seemingly academic knowledge I wish to share with you all will come across in such meaningful ways that you will not be able to put the book down. My goal is learn to write a non-fiction book as if you are reading a fiction book…one in which human character with all her complexities are laid bare and visible for you to see and for you to learn from…one in which you can find yourself in…one in which you have no idea that you are learning new ways of thinking and being because you get so wrapped up in the story. A story that keeps teaching and sharing its morsels of wisdom with you as you go about your daily life, allowing you to unpack the Golden Nuggets piece by piece.
A story that changes her readers, one at a time, and eventually the world from a world of Dogma that keeps us in bondage, slaves to It’s abuse…to a world who divorces this abuse and lives in absolute and complete freedom and acceptance of who we are at any given point in time.
This is my goal. This is my story. This is my making of a storyteller.
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| Me boarding the plane back from LA after a long weekend of learning… and of course some reading great new reading material to help me learn the art of storytelling! |
