In January 2023, StoryCenter’s Joe Lambert made a digital story each day of the month. The process was the same each day. Write for 10 minutes, record the voiceover, and edit the film in 90 minutes. The choices of topics grew from prompts from the Signpost Story project, the first 14 stories are from that collection. After those the prompts came from Lambert and StoryCenter’s prompt collections (see StorySeed Writing Prompt Flashcards). Together they represent a contemporary approach to autobiography, video snapshots of moments that shape a human from youth to old age.
Supposed to be
Day 1 - 31 Days of Creativity From the Prompt: Share a story of home, and a time you sought refuge
Joshua Tree
Day 2 - Take us to a moment when being in nature - land, water, mountain, river, forest, desert- helped you to face something in your life
I-Hotel
Day 3 - Share a story of a singular breakthrough in your coming of age as an adult
Hazard HiLL
Day 4 - Share a story about when you fell in love, and what you learned about yourself in the process
Hand wringing
Day 5 - Share a story of what a family member gave you as a gift, an inherited trait, a value, a legacy, an heirloom, and how it informs who you are.
Bear Cubs
Day 6 - Share a story of losing a family member, either by a change in relationship, or an ending
leap
Day 7 - Share a story about who you were as a child that might explain what you chose as work or passion as an adult
Landing
Day 8 - Share a story about how you made meaning in your vocation/avocation, and how it changed your relationship to work
Bernal heights
Day 9 - Share a story of making a difference, in a small way, or in a larger way
Stand up and listen
Day 10 - Share a story of how you learned about responsibility to the community/world around you
Surrender
Day 11 - Share a story of deep learning, of passage into knowledge that you hold as sacred and true
Sacred Spaces
Day 12 - Share a story of illumination, satori, epiphany, mystery, serendipity, sychonicity, and how it changed you
Seventeen
Day 13 - Share a story of when you first met death
Stress
Day 14 - Share a story of your own vulnerability in health, well being, and how you have learned to co-exist or thrive despite or informed by that sense of frailty
A Gift
Day 15 - Write about a gift you have received.
The gift may be material, or may take other forms
bully
Day 16 - Write about the first time you really understood what a bully is.
Losing things
Day 17 - Write about something you lost. When do you think of it? Did you ever find it?
Moko
Day 18 - Tell a story about a scar
things we carry
Day 19 - Tell us the story of an object - one that you have, that you don’t have, that was passed down to you.
Howl
Day 20 - Choose a metaphor from nature to describe your identity
or your life, and bring us to a moment in your life when this metaphor had meaning.
two Faces
Day 21 - Write about a time when a belief you had changed.
slacker/revolutionary
Day 22- Tell a story about the moment a fictional narrative – book, movie, theater, etc. – changed
light
Day 23 - Tell a story about the light coming through your window
Hanging in
Day 24 - Tell a story about testing your endurance
getting finished
Day 25 - Tell a story about re-discovering an earlier enthusiasm. It could be a old favorite subject or topic, a childhood hobby, a place of adventure.
failure
Day 26 - Share a story about forgiveness, and why sometimes it is not enough
mixer
Day 27 - Tell a story about an appliance, a tool, something useful
Lost tribe
Day 28 - Choose a picture from your life - an actual picture or a picture that you have in your head - and spend five minutes writing about what’s in the picture, then spend ten minutes writing about what’s not in the picture, the story behind it, what we can’t see unless you tell us.
starry night
Day 29 - Tell a story about a work of art and how it affected you
stupid
Day 30 - Tell a story about being stupid
enough
Day 31 - Tell a story about storytelling