THE STORY SPOT

Author JK Rowling speaks of failure and imagination as crucial to a life well-lived.

[E]ven if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

Read the full transcription at “The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination” at HarvardMagazine.com
On Vimeo as: “J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement“. June, 2008.

The eternal debate rages on, does it not? In this segment of human entertainment history, we seem to be swaying heavily toward factual stories — creative non-fiction, memoir, documentaries and the like — as “best”. But as we people will do, our collective minds will eventually change and the course of time will shift these pun-laden sands to invented tales then back again. In the meantime, here’s a little something from intrepid New Yorker, Charlie Todd, a man who understands with the fibre of his being that experience is truth. Period.

Charlie Todd’s Improv Everywhere

Bonus Track: Here’s a terrific program (featuring Improv Everywhere) that peeks inside perception and experience as truth:
“Mind Games: Act Two, The Spy Who Loved Everyone“ Episode 286 of This American Life

Extraordinary cuteness aside, I wanted to share this with you. You, storytellers. You, weavers of imaginary worlds. Little Capucine reminds us of the sheer pleasure there is in allowing stories to appear right before our eyes, without forethought, software, or seminar-approved paradigms and definitely without straining for the best word. Sometimes the thread is all there is and it is good.

Without further adieu, I present Capucine! Via the blog of my cherished friend, novelist Susan Taylor Chehak.

Good writing, everyone!

We writers are imagineers. We are seers. We create emotional experiences for tomorrow’s readers, viewers, and listeners through our stories today. Inventor Jay Walker is the curator of the Library of Human Imagination. The private library is his personal monument to human ingenuity — without which we writers would be lost. It is, without doubt, glorious.

This TED talk offers not only an interesting bit of history about the printed book but also Walker’s take on creativity:

So how do we create? [...We] create by surrounding ourselves with stimuli, with human achievement, with history, with the things that drive us and make us human. The passionate discovery, the bones of dinosaurs long gone, the maps of space that we’ve experienced, and ultimately the hallways that stimulate our mind and our imagination.

Read on »