Your brainstorming session on storytelling via the Internet.
Nate Baker
I'm a storyteller and a chronic creative. Here I explore creative collaboration, tell story across various media, and highlight the side streets of Nashville.
I awarded a few consistently articulate friends above with bookmark flags; Start there. If you're looking for Nashville content, be sure to follow my Reader Shared Items.
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David Cintron is a native Texan, enjoys audio engineering, getting free movies from Redbox, and SMSing. Learn more about David at loudestnoise.com.
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About Nate Baker
I'm a storyteller and a chronic creative. Here I explore creative collaboration, tell story across various media, and highlight the side streets of Nashville. Belmont pinned a journalism badge on me in 2008. I work at Sitemason and founded Diving Board and Click Homeless.
There's an easter egg hidden somewhere on this site. Can you find it?
It's a throwback to a hidden message I included in my first few websites. In 5th grade my dad handed me a copy of some website editing software. Web design has been a creative outlet since.
One reason why I blog is to collaborate with folks.
Follow this train of thought like you’re taking a walk with me.
Know how you can be walking and you smell one thing—then in the next step it’s all different?
Like how this lady smells moths balls when she walks by the bush that grows into the fence, but as her left foot hits the ground, she smells laundry sheets: It’s probably coming from the vent in that brick basement.
I bring it up to say just between those two scents, when she looks up in that moment, there’s a pair of tennis shoes tangled in the power lines.
The woman knows they’re there. She’s been walking this path every night for years.
Maybe the stories are true… about hanging shoes marking places to buy drugs, or a place where a gang member was killed. Either way, each time she sees the shoes, she sees something evil.
On nights she forgets to look away from the spot on the wires, she whispers “Behind me Satan.”
She says the same thing when she sees a shadow move past her bedroom window, in the fragile state between wakefulness and sleep.
The only other thing she sees tangled in power lines are kites.
Her husband taught her how to fly her first kite. When she longs for him, she finds herself looking for colored plastic entangled in telephone wires, and kite string in trees: where she can follow the string to memories.
Shoes and kites.
They must grow from power lines, finding sustenance somewhere deep inside all the wires: from our phone conversations with far-off family, the constant chatting of teenage lovers, the emails we write carefully, the emails we write carelessly, our Law and Order, our MTV and local news, the power that fuels the lights and our dim love making, the power that fuels our computers and connects us to the world—detaches us from the world; all the data that moves through the power lines of our city are the roots to a living thing. From power lines grow death and life.
Shoes and kites.
The woman walks to the park by the middle school to clear her head each night. Usually by this time, it’s just her and the rabbits darting through the school buses.
She walks the same loop each night until she remembers who she is. Sometimes she wrestles with God so intensely that she waves her hands in the air as she walks.
At the end of tonight’s walk she feels a peace that gives her the strength to send an email. It had been written over and over but never sent. It’s an email of forgiveness.
When she releases her finger from her mouse, the data in the email moves to the edge of her house.
Then at the moment the message pulses through the wires over her street, a shoelace knot loosens.
Further down the line, just a few blocks, a bit of kite ribbon grows from the power lines.
So now we have a network of expanding food. Your Blanket Buffet awaits. Go mingle. And no, the food items are not being coordinated. Yes, we may have too many vegetable plates or 14 loaves of bunny bread. Invent a delicious vegetable bread thing. Don’t be asking for organization.
Wait, what in the world is going on? Why?
I had this idea after reflecting on what culture is missing in Nashville. The point of gathering is to create space for meaningful conversation, new friendships, networking, whatever culture you’d like to spawn between the blankets.
Bring your kite, bocce set, or 18-piece show dog hoop course if you’d like. In fact, bring your fluppy, kids, the boss that just fired you, that cute gelato scooper who can’t stop staring into your eyes. It’s all up to you.
Any announcements related to weather or change of plans will be announced at Twitter.com/blanketthepark.
Ever watched kids at play in a room full of toys or at their grandparent’s farm? —really looked.
When kids are given the space, they create culture like demigods.
They are creating worlds, forming relationships, making sense of their space with created law, discovering all that things can do:
Now there’s a Rube Goldberg machine at the top of the slide; a hut forming in the woods from sticks and twine; a game of tag that didn’t exist until these kids learned the skill of launching Wiffle balls from a hose.
Kids create. Like little gods with seven free hours, they hunker down and move their hands till they see something beautiful.
The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in his essay “On Fairy-Stories” that our desire to create points us to the existence of a Creator.
We make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made; and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.
Just as I inherited my mom’s eyes, or my dad’s frankness, I’ve inherited my Creator’s desire to create.
—We’re going to have to stop here. There’s a kid tugging at your knee.
Look down. It’s you inner child. Bend down so you’re looking her in the eye. Now listen. Don’t dare turn away.
She’s putting her little hands over your hands and asking you to show her how to make a cup of lemonade, a tree house, a friend, a splint for that limping bird, so many things you didn’t know existed.
She’s looking up at you and asking you to create something beautiful.
It’s fascinating to study how children’s authors tackle the challenge of taking a meaningful message and packaging it into a concise and intriguing read.
In fact, I collect children’s books to see how authors do it. When I was in Rome recently with my family, I found myself exploring the children’s section of a used bookstore.
My favorite find was David Pithers and Sarah Greene’s “We Can Say No!” which illustrates the ever important message for children, not to trust strangers.
The book explains, you shouldn’t judge people by their appearance, but by their actions. Disney’s “Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs” is a modern example of this theme. A delicious apple may actually be a very bad thing, just as the nice woman holding the apple could be an ugly witch in disguise.
I was struck by how brilliantly the authors conveyed this concept:
Most grown-ups are not dangerous. But there are some who are.
They do not look like monsters.
They look like ordinary people.
Which grown-ups should you be careful of?
You must looks out for what they say and do!
Tom and Joanne know that dangerous people are very clever, but Tom and Joanne are clever too.
“They do not look like monsters.” I like to think this came from a conversation Pithers or Greene may have had with their own child. (I see a hand on a shoulder now. Perhaps they’re talking on the bunk bed. “But you’re clever too, and you’ll know what to do.”)
This book was written for someone, whether it was their children, their neighbors or local school children.
Are you writing for a reader you love? Crafting your words in a way this person will get?
This is exactly what writer extraordinaire and one of the world’s most successful and best-selling author Stephen King suggests.
In his book “On Writing,” King argues writers have an ideal reader:
Someone—I can’t remember who, for the life of me—once wrote that all novels are really letters aimed at one person. As it happens, I believe this. I think that every novelist has a single ideal reader; that at various points during the composition of a story, the writer is thinking, “I wonder what he/she will think when he/she reads this part?” For me that first reader is my wife, Tabitha.
It’s intimate.
And when done well, children’s books are concise and exciting so a child is more likely to absorb the message.
What I love is this: The things that make a great children’s book—intimacy, brevity, and adventure—are the things that make great writing in general; It’s just easier to study great story when it’s steeped and poured into a small tea cup.
Why sure, I’ll take another cup.
Guest Editor:Jacklyn Johnston is a former children’s book publicist soon to be law student who also considers herself an explorer, runner, avid reader, learner and writer who is always curious. She was gracious enough to return to the role of Nate’s editor. She edited Nate’s work when they both worked at Belmont University’s campus paper, Belmont Vision.
For years, I’ve been trying to understand my perhaps irrational disdain for the popularity of Seth Godin.
I think I’m getting closer to an explanation for the disdain. Godin is a brilliant thinker and it’s not entirely his fault. However, sometimes he doesn’t spend enough time explaining how his ideas should be used.
His creative thoughts on marketing and business are best used as case studies, but the value of a case study is only realized at the end of a process: only after steps are taken to test new ideas.
Unfortunately, I largely see Godin’s work quoted alongside insightful additions like these:
I couldn’t have said it better myself!
Seth gets it right again!
RT
Godin consistently writes about innovation and new ways of looking at things, so it pains me to see so many people miss that the great value in a Godin blog post is wrestling with it.
His hyper-concise writing style encourages a sharing culture more that other writers who discuss similar topics such as Chris Anderson or Malcolm Gladwell, but the style doesn’t make Godin’s work more or less relevant. It only points us to the best way to use his content.
The point of Godin, as a case study, isn’t to make decisions; it’s to figure out what else needs to be researched.
Here’s an example…
When I was at Borders buying a stack of books, an employee at the counter inquired about how they all had the theme of Seth Godin in common. I explained that it’s only fair to be well-read on a topic you are publicly refuting.
The employee, who sympathized with my work, told me one of his bosses was inspired by a Godin excerpt that led to a new policy causing more problems than solutions. The “inspiring” Godin concept was that every customer service issue should become highest priority. Except the employee said with all customer service issues at the same priority level, they all got less attention.
Use Godin to brainstorm and to open yourself up to new ways of doing things, but never make important decisions solely based on an inspirational excerpt from any great thinker.
If you read Godin, be inspired. Then, collect contextual data, keep channels of feedback open, and make informed decisions.
Godin’s 2006 introduction to Small Is the New Big is one of the more relevant things he’s said about his work:
If you want a narrative and lots of research, you’re in the wrong place. Quick, put this book down and buy something else. But I’m betting you don’t need another dense book. You don’t need more proof, either. What you need is a small prod, or perhaps an aggressive whack.
After first reading this quote, I passionately put the book down and walked away because unlike other readers I wanted “another dense book” with “narrative and lots of research” rather than “an aggressive whack.”
My guess is that Godin likes seeing his name everywhere, but at a deeper and more meaningful level, he wishes people would disagree with him. At least then he would know people are thinking about his ideas in a meaningful way.
Recently, I’ve been able to warm up to Godin as I’ve become more self-aware of the nature of my disdain. I had to figure out what I hated about the popularity of Godin before I felt free to enjoy him.
So if you see me reading or re-reading a Godin book, know when I take it home I’ll put it with my other marketing books, or perhaps on a brainstorming table by a sketchpad and Legos — just never on a shelf by itself.
Guest Editor:Tom Cheredar is a freelance reporter who wants to improve the quality of local journalism on the Internet one link at a time. He writes for Geeks of Doom, GeniusCog, NewAssignment.net, and much more. He has helped Nathan discover a love for comics by recommending gems such as Astro City, which explores the humanity of superheroes.
I’m not sure how I didn’t catch it was a three-sign message. Here are the messages together if you don’t happen to catch this one at West End and 29th Ave. North.
Here’s an original comic parodying Godin as a substitute teacher, perhaps before his writing career.
Seth Godin Critique Week: This week at Nate News I’m spending some time becoming self-aware of my disdain for the popularity of Seth Godin, the marketing and business author. No doubt he’s brilliant at what he does, but some things about his popularity are unsettling to me.
Tomorrow, I’ll flesh out in “epic” form why Godin’s work is best used when it’s viewed as case study, rather than something that holds more actionable authority.
There is a lot left to do, but I was encouraged. After taking pictures of these guys for ten minutes and waiting for words to emerge, I finally hollered up, “Want to pose?!”
RSS
Follow this train of thought like you’re taking a walk with me.
Ever watched kids at play in a room full of toys or at their grandparent’s farm? —really looked.
It’s fascinating to study how children’s authors tackle the challenge of taking a meaningful message and packaging it into a concise and intriguing read.
“They do not look like monsters.” I like to think this came from a conversation Pithers or Greene may have had with their own child. (I see a hand on a shoulder now. Perhaps they’re talking on the bunk bed. “But you’re clever too, and you’ll know what to do.”)
Guest Editor: 
For years, I’ve been trying to understand my perhaps irrational disdain for the popularity of Seth Godin.
Here’s an example…
After first reading this quote, I passionately put the book down and walked away because unlike other readers I wanted “another dense book” with “narrative and lots of research” rather than “an aggressive whack.”
Guest Editor: 
