Story Rebel

I love talking shop with other story tellers. Especially ones that work in different formats—comic book artists, screenwriters, podcasters... We're all telling stories, but in different mediums. Which means we're thinking about it in slightly different ways. Those conversations are the best! An hour will flash by in an instant. Which is what happened when I sat down with audiobook narrator Todd Eflin last week. I went in planning to ask him about audiobook narration for nonfiction authors—why...

I'm back in the office after a month-long trip that involved six planes, countless trains, and about 600 miles of bicycling—and the weirdest thing I learned was how much I missed my job. Tell that to the Jessie of 15 years ago, who was crawling out of her skin working a desk job, desperate to be anywhere but work. You know what she'd say? Good. That means we DID IT. Back then, all I wanted was to be my own boss and work on things that mattered to me. And so, slowly but surely, chapter by...

I always think I’m going to get so much done on travel days. All those hours on a train or plane—it should be pure, uninterrupted bliss! You can’t do anything but sit. There’s spotty wifi, so you won’t be tempted to get sucked into emails. You can just relax and write while watching the countryside scroll by. As if. Instead, travel days are a snarl of timetable stress and endless waiting, punctuated by periods of scrambling to board and disembark. You can’t truly become absorbed in your work...

My Dig word is Possibility. I embrace possibility. I delight in it. I look for it everywhere. I help others see their own possibility. And, because a Dig word is both your superpower and your Achilles heel, I also get easily overwhelmed by possibility. I shut down when there are too many choices, too many obligations, too many possibilities on the table. I want to keep all possible paths open, so asking me to choose triggers something deep and painful for me. But... what am I talking about?...