So there are a couple of things that I like to tell kids, because I do a lot of work in classrooms and I work for an organization called Compass, which is statewide arts organization in the state of Minnesota. And so I’ll do week long writing residencies and story writing residences with kids. And the fundamental aspect of that is that I want kids to be writing the kinds of stories that they themselves like to read or the stories that they themselves like to interact with.
But another thing that I talk to kids about, I do this a lot, is I talk about the fundamental aspect of storytelling for what it means to be a human being and that I tell them that first of all a story is not the words on the page, right, the story is something separate and we actually experience stories in all kinds of other ways that aren’t reading or listening that is separate from a book. And so I’ll have them brainstorm and they’ll talk about the stories that they interact with on television. They’ll talk about dance as a story. They’ll talk about video games as a story.
They’ll talk about plays as a story. They’ll talk about art as sometimes. Just a single piece of art tells a story, right?
Because one of the things that comes out of that is this sort of understanding that our need to tell stories and our need to share stories with other people is this fundamental aspect of what it means to be a human being and that whenever we tell a story or listen to a story or read a story or perform a story or just observe a story we are participating in this ancient human activity and we are connecting ourselves to the larger human family.
When I am encouraging a kid, a student to write a story I don’t tell them to make something that I will like, I tell them that they need to make something that delights themselves. And that’s why we do this, to delight ourselves and then maybe we can delight somebody else.