One of my favorite books on storytelling is “Six Second Stories,” by Rain Bennett. Rain uses his stories and those of his clients to show how sharing your vulnerabilities can develop trust.
Halfway through the book he raises an important point. Storytelling is not just for your readers, it is for you as well.
When you are crafting stories from your life, you have to open yourself up and face your own vulnerabilities. It ain't easy. It is like going through self-therapy. To understand why you do what you do, you dig up a lot of your past and previous experiences. You got to pull out all your stories and build the whole story from them.
He equates it to putting together a jigsaw puzzle. If you were to just pull one piece of the puzzle out at a time and try to put it together, you’d never finish. So instead, what do you do? You dump all the pieces out onto the table and spread them around so you can see them all. Then you start to see corners and end pieces that connect, and eventually pieces that are the same color that connects, too. And after a while, the image starts to emerge.
It’s the same thing with your life experiences.
You have to look at ALL of them, even from when you were a child, and after working for a while you can start to see the intersections of your skills, passions, and experiences, and put them together in a very specific way that paints a beautiful picture of who you are and what you were put on this earth to do. - Rain Bennett
It has been an interesting week for me. I practically cocooned myself to do that internal work. I went through the series of events in my life–every success, every failure, every pivot or transition I went through– and figured out how they impacted me. How I faced the challenges in life and what I learned from the failures. Because all these struggles and triumphs made me the person I am. They have given me “my” unique perspective.
Have you taken time to look at your whole life and figure out how various incidents have shaped you? Not just the good ones but the bad ones too. The ones you don’t want to talk about. Are there any stories connected with them? If there are, hang on to them, or better still write them down, because they are at the core of your being. And they are the ones that will connect you with readers the most.
I am working on mine for my next book
In response to last week’s letter,
wrote to me:“You're so right about the value of writing letters. Not only are they more personal and exciting to receive when handwritten but they also serve as a permanent collection of life events. My mother kept all my letters to her while I was away at university and they bring back memories that would have disappeared into the past.”
I thought I will respond to her with a handwritten letter.
Speaking of destroying the letters I am reminded of two famous writers who asked their letters and diaries to be burned after their death. Thankfully, in both cases, their wishes were ignored. These writers were Marcus Aurelius and Frank Kafka.
According to the Roman historian Cassius Dio, Marcus Aurelius requested that his writings be destroyed after his death. But his obedient servant disobeyed him and saved his diaries, which were basically written as self-work. Today Aurelius’s Meditation is one of the most-read books next to the Bible.
Frank Kafka instructed his friend, Max Brod, “My last request: Everything I leave behind me . . . in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches and so on, to be burned unread.” Brod, disregarding Kafka's request, and less than months after his death signed an agreement to prepare a posthumous edition of Kafka's unpublished novels. This decision led to Kafka becoming one of the most influential and widely read authors of the 20th century.
This week I published a 3 book combo. These are all three books at a very affordable price. If you haven’t got them you should get them here:
On that note,
Would you like to be a part of my ARC team?
The ARC Advanced Review Copy Team) a team is a group of dedicated readers who get an advance copy of the book to get the initial feedback and review on the release of the book. I am looking for 10 dedicated readers for my next book “Become A Productive Writer - The Mindset and Tools You Need.” You will be expected to respond within a week of receiving the book.
Please reply in response to this email if are interested and you can respond within the time frame.
I came across a very interesting use of AI. Tiago Forte has trained an AI on his book manuscript of Building a Second Brain, and it can now answer questions from the book. Truly mind-blowing what AI can do now.
Try it out for yourself.
That’s all from me this week.
Dear Neera
Thank you for your handwritten letter. It's so rare these days and it's so much more personal than a typed missive! I just want you to know that I admire your fearlessness and ability to write with such openness. You are not afraid to reveal your vulnerabilities and your stories are so much more meaningful because of that.
It's also brave to put your handwriting out there because as you know I consider handwriting to be a personal part of one's total makeup. In fact that open, courageous quality as well as creativity are qualities clearly reflected in your handwriting!
With my best wishes,
Sandra
Cocooning is real!!