Adventures in Storytelling
a blog
Periodically Julie writes blog posts about the connections of storytelling and life. Sometimes there will be prompts to help you write a piece of your own story. Remember, we are the authors of our own stories. No one else can tell them for us.
Montana or Bust – 1973 Driving our VW bug cross country from northern Illinois, through most of Montana on our way to backpack in Glacier National Park was an adventure. Following us in their sporty Triumph convertible were our friends. We had decided early on that they would follow since their car could travel much faster…
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This is an update/revision of a blog I wrote back in 2012. In the Beginning In the spring of 1969 as I filled out applications for teaching jobs, a difficult question for an eager young teacher-to-be to answer, “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” needed a special answer. I loved my student…
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Researching Personal Stories Researching Personal Stories, say what? Don’t you just tell what happened? Well, you can, but it’s not going to be the best story you’ve ever told. Researching a personal story can be a fun and surprisingly interesting experience. For years I refused to tell personal stories because I thought my life was…
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Adventures show up when we least expect or sometimes want them. Here’s mine that happened a few days ago! Monday I journeyed from Eagle, CO, to Grand Junction for my annual cardiology appointment. My appointment, originally scheduled for Tuesday was changed to Monday at the last minute due to a doctors’ training. Perhaps the…
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I’ve been playing with Story! As Kevin Cordi teaches in his book, “Playing with Stories,” finding the best way, a new way, to tell a story is through play. Thanks, Kevin, for helping me find another way to tell two stories at once! “The Snail Wife” is a Chinese folktale and also a Korean…
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(Click here to see the full 1918 Flu poster.) Quarantine! In the fall of 1918 Iowa quarantined the entire state. All gathering places were closed. It was unlawful to spit on the sidewalks. During this time a Quarantine Notice was tacked to the front door of my mother’s home. Both her father and younger sister…
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One of my favorite childhood stories was “Bozo the Button Buster” written by Carl Sandburg. Originally published in Rootabaga Tales, it was in our collection of Book Trails, a series of story collections bound in red with gold lettering on the spine. The full title of the story was “How Bozo the Button Buster Busted…
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Stories can be long meandering works of prose. Details, of course, make the story interesting, bring it to life. But how do you find a story’s bones, the core of its being? Take, for instance, the Scottish folktale of Janet and Tam Lin. It’s a story I fell in love with the first time I…
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“Nothing happens in our lives, and in the world, without purpose.” ~ Daily Om In my seven decades of travel around the sun, I’ve learned there is purpose in what happens whether it’s good, bad or ugly. Coincidence? No more like synchronicity. SQuire Rushnell calls it “God Winks” in his A smallish book, “When God…
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Recently I finished reading “Take Joy“, a book about writing written for writers by writer, Jane Yolen. One chapter was on using the landscape or place as a character in your story. So I am going to try that out – using the place where I grew up as the main character. The 1920’s Chesterland,…
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