Am I refining the story into what it always was or is it evolving along with me?

Or am I cutting willy-nilly, hoping for a Hail Mary, and calling it art anyway?

Hey hey hey! Hello to all of youse! The world may be a shitshow, but may I say—you’re looking quite fantastic?

Aside from my open mic show and another local open mic I adore and try to attend regularly, I have two upcoming shows this week where I’m a featured performer! YAY?!!?

In December, I had big plans to tackle a story I’ve written essays on, but haven’t so far been able to successfully translate to the stage. Next thing I knew, it was January, and although a ton of tasks for In a Nutshell Storytelling were taken care of (My name is Amy, and I am a productive procrastinator), none of my personal storytelling plans had come to fruition.

So now I’m working on a story that started as an essay and was told on stage once, about 6 months ago. Since then, it’s seen many iterations as I cobble and cut, scribble and scrawl, meander and digress into the mic with the record button on, trying to remember how to memorize without memorizing so much that it becomes stiff recitation . . .

My computer desktop is littered with so many copies of my story, y’all! I have to click open like 8-9 docs with cryptic names like “pp short-oral.doc” and “latest pp new minus bonus.doc.” The worst is this cluster of docs named “shorter,” “shortest,” “newest shortest,” “shorter than shortest,” and perplexingly, “new-short-long-no-pp.”

Past me is so inconsiderate of present me; you’d think present me would fix that for future me, but NOPE.

So here’s what’s happening:

There’s some common advice that I almost always gave writers when I was book editing, and I see the same issue now with live storytellers, too. This is advice I nearly never apply to my own writing (take my own advice? MOI??), but I am trying very hard to apply it to my live storytelling. The advice is this:

You can cut the intro.

As in, YOU, Amy, YOU can cut the intro.

Oh, I can?? But . . . the intro has this super funny line about peer pressuring neurodivergent friends and family mem—

Cut it.

If I cut it, they won’t understand meeeeeee!

They’ll understand you fine. Cut it!

But then I have to change ALL the peer pressure lines! And then I can’t end the story with how I’m always up for a good ol’ fashioned night of peer pres—

CUT IT!

WAHHH!!!!! But if I cut it, then I can’t tell the audience I was peer pressuring myself along, and that peer pres—

YOUR STORY ISN’T ABOUT PEER PRESSURE, AMY!

. . .fine.

And that’s when I take a break, walk around the block, harass the dog with unconditional love and kisses, grab the mic, start again without my super-swell intro, which forces me to refine several aspects throughout the piece, causing me to dig a little deeper into what the hell I’m actually talking about because I no longer have my super-swell peer pressure transitions, and by the time I fumble my way to the end . . .

Sigh.

No doubt about it. The piece is stronger. It didn’t need peer pressure. I just liked it. I was enamored with the device.

There’s nothing wrong with having a device, using a device, using artifice and enjoying it, btw. We’re all doing that, all the time, in all the ways. (Also, go ahead and make an entire story that’s nothing but pure intro! Do it! I dares ya, ya contrary mofo!💜)

But this piece is stronger without it. And I found that having to find new ways to connect the parts of the story made me come out of it feeling a little clearer about what the story is about.

Which made me wonder: how far can one strip the artifice? And does stripping it always equal “more true”? Like, am I discovering a central truth about my story I wasn’t aware of before, that I wouldn’t have discovered if I hadn’t been willing to strip?

Or . . .

Did I grow out of the peer pressure part of the story, and the parts of the story I’m emphasizing now, the parts that seem more truthy, only seem more truthy because my perception of the events within the story have changed?

Did I refine the story to find a deeper truth or did the story evolve with me?

Woah, dude. Woah.

Harassed with unconditional love and kisses.

If you’re around Placerville Jan 11: Word of Mouth Storytelling

If you’re around Novato Jan 17: The Shuffle

I’d love to see you and meet you and hear what you think of my story! Also, Sacramento peeps, there’s always Do Tell on the 13th and WILDCARD! on the 15th!

Talk again, my favorite friends and looky-loos!

xoxo, Amy

If you make things—stories, art, decisions, messes—I’d love to know:
how do you tell when something needs refining? Or is it really that you’ve changed?

You can reply here if you want. I read everything. xoxo, Amy