Once upon a time, there was a piece of sushi.
And when the sushi was touched by a chopstick, it turned Into a cat. The cat danced happily on the plate for the entire restaurant, and then randomly, a bunny came out of nowhere and chased the cat into the kitchen and it was grabbed by a chef. The chef loved the sushi cat and he became the owner. And every day the cat chased all the mice away and in return, she received food. She ate magic pudding and magic milk. And every day that food changed her until she became a galaxy cat with planets and stars orbiting around her. That is a story by eight year old Renee, and it is full of wonder, innocence and wisdom. And it’s a welcome respite from our real world. But that’s what a story does, right? It allows us to enter an extraordinary world. Where we gain insight and wisdom. So that we can deal with the world today. In that sense stories are instructive. In our writing community, stories are much more, stories are our mentors, powerful mentors. But how do we hear their time tested wisdom? Well, we look to a story map or a story structure. Now, you may have heard of Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey, which is usually depicted as a circle. But that proved to be a little bit difficult to teach fourth graders and so we reconstructed it and we call it a WV map. So in the last ten years, we’ve been working with our team of young writers and teens to develop this map in order to tell stories, to analyze literature and movies. And to even pull out a couple of nuggets of wisdom from their own lives. But in order to really get to those nuggets of wisdom, we have to really see how this story map works. So I'm going to tell you a story and it’s going to be about me writing this TED Talk. So watch the slides and follow me because it’s going to get ugly. Okay. In the beginning this summer, I wanted to write 30 blogs. And it’ll be all about creative writing for our students and our parents. And with my bowl of popcorn and my coffee I was ready to go, I was in my happy place. And then I get an email from a former student, who says, oh, he’s going to organize a TEDx event. Great! Awesome! Congratulations! But he wants us to present. Oh, well, I just committed to 30 blogs and the summer is in full swing,
we’re teaching students and my mom, she’s 89 years old
and she is losing her balance to the point where she’s falling.
And when she falls, he can't get up.
Then I started thinking about my high school days,
where I am sweating bullets in my English class,
where I’m thinking about characters, plots, deconstruction,
subtext, blah, blah, blah.
Not to mention I’m drinking a little bit of Pepto-Bismol at lunch just to settle my stomach because I’m such a nervous wreck.
If I can prevent someone from getting into all that, then great, I’m in.
So I email the organizers and say, okay, let’s do it.
The next day I enter the wild world of writing a TED Talk.
Test one - I write my first draft, it is terrible, it is so bad.
But you know, they’re all bad in the first try, keep going.
Test two - I write it again and it is pretty good this time,
but it is 48 minutes long. Keep going.
Test three - my wife, Sue Shen, who is also writing code,
she steps in and says,
“You know what? I’m going to write this for you so that you don’t have to do it.”
Okay, awesome, great! Well, her story is she’s a five year old girl,
she’s moving from Taiwan to Canada, and she has no English speaking ability at all. And she's being pulled onto the ice rink by her friends and her teachers and she is screaming and her face is full of tears, and she says, “Nooo!” And at that point, she realizes she found her voice. Yes, awesome, this is great, this is a great topic, we love it, we give the thumbs up and we are so relieved that we have something. The next day I secretly keep writing in my TED talk, because I can’t get this story map out of my head. And I get so excited, I give it to Sue Shen and she says, “What? You change the topic again? We’re always talking about TED and I have a book and I’m writing it and it’s pulling me from it and there’s a New York editor waiting on it.” From that point on, Sue Shen and I are so tense, we don’t even talk about TED. Now the summer has come and gone and fall is coming up, we don’t have time to prep for that. I definitely don’t have time to prep for this TED Talk. And my mom has fallen and I have these 30 blogs to do, and I forgot to tell you, I made a bet online or a promise that if I don’t do these blogs, then I have to pay to a campaign that sounds like dump. Sue Shen says, “That’s it. We are out of here. We have to pull out.” She emailed the organizers and that night we lower our heads. Now, I usually don’t like getting out of the middle of a commitment, but I know our schedule. We are overextended and we are losing sleep. At night, I go to bed tossing and turning and my stomach churns. Next day, I get an email from the organizers mom and she says, two people have already pulled out. They're looking for speakers, and the organizers themselves have put up money or this event to fly. Sue Shen emails and says, “Sorry, we just can’t do it.” But I cannot let this [die]. People are counting on us. There’s our former student, his mom who’s been a mentor for us for many years and our writing group, And I start to think, well, maybe the story map would be a great topic, because it has allowed me some epiphanies and many of our students. We get into all of that and I start to think, hmm, maybe that could happen, and suddenly, the demons of my profession start to rise up in me and it says, “Well, if you’re going to do it, you’d better be good.” And suddenly I start to get angry. And I am determined to face these fears and I'm going to make it work. I emailed the organizers and say, “Okay, we’re back in.” The next day I am furiously writing this TED talk. And I get to a point where I love everything I have to say. It’s everything I want to say about stories. But it is an hour and a half long. And so I get panic and I start to cut everything, all the pages and pages until it starts to collapse on to each other and it is nothing. And I start to feel like my mom, who’s wavering unbalance and starting to fall, fall, fall. Look, I am not a published author of a big publishing house, I am not a professor of a university and I feel like my lack of it is already is starting to strike me and I feel like a fraud. Then Sue Shen emails me and actually reminds me that there was a student in our class who never spoke. And many, many months later, her mom calls us up and says. “Thank you for telling my daughter about the story map about this WV thing, because she is continuing to write, she uses it in class, and every once in a while she’ll come up with a epiphany that surprises her in the conversations. And from that moment, I feel those negative voices, those demons of perfection start to burn away from me and I become someone else. Someone who will not throw away an opportunity to share something with the world. From there, I revise and revise, many days go by, weeks go by until I get to this point where I am sharing this story, that is my story. Now, you may have seen through this story map, I hope, that there are moments in your life that occurred that follows it, and perhaps you might be able to pull an epiphany or a nugget of wisdom from it. And if there’s anything that a story map can tell us, it is this. That we can pull ourselves up from the floor of defeat in every section of this story map, even in the all is lost moment, there is a mentor or an ally willing to help us or shout out a word of encouragement when we need it. But we need to hear it. We need to choose to act on that advice. Remember Galaxy Cat? Galaxy Cat has her adventures and she realizes that the bunnies that chased her and the mice that she chased are not her adversaries, but her allies and mentors. And from that moment, she becomes not just a cat with superpowers and can fly, she becomes somebody with a community. A community that will have her back long after this story is ended. We, as humans, are storytellers and we live by the light of our stories. Our job is to absorb all the stories we can, have our adventures, make mistakes, struggle out of them and then tell your story. And when we do, we cannot help but become a catalyst. So here’s your call to aventure. Deeply go into your special world, have your adventures and tell your story. And when you do, we can all shine like Galaxy Cat. Thank you. (Applause)
