People Are
Stories-in-Progress
This is the first Season of the JourneyPen Project. A Season is an offering that allows us to take a deep dive into a specific topic in the writing craft.
In People Are Stories-in-Progress, we explore the way that I make meaning in my life and in my storytelling. For me, it’s the exact same skillset.
Artistic excellence is important, and so is emotional wholeness.
Luckily, you can use the exact same tools to pursue both a well-crafted story and a meaningful life.
People Are Stories-in-Progress does this through the foundational lens that individuals are in the middle of their own stories, just as much as characters are, and by leaning into our storytelling tools, we can craft what kind of life we would like to have.
Available Formats.
There are several ways you can approach People Are Stories-in-Progress.
Online version:
There’s the online version, which is more than 44,000 words long. That’s as long as some novels. One of my projects this year is to review it, so right now, only the first section is available.
If you want to proceed to the online version, you can scroll down to the table of contents, or you can simply click on the button below.
eBook version:
If you want a complete copy of your own, you can purchase the eBook version here on this website. As a head’s up, I will also send you any subsequent editions of this e-book as I refine People Are Stories-in-Progress.
Pathway for People Are Stories-in-Progress:
Others might call it a workbook (or a workshop), that term doesn’t capture this creation’s scope.
You hike up a mountain, and you see a new vista that gives perspective about where you’ve been.
You follow a new trail in the woods, and it leads you to a beautiful waterfall, which was invisible from the spot where you started.
Likewise, pathways take you somewhere—to a new experience or a new insight, which you might not have had before.
I have curated of a path of questions and exercises intended to take you towards a particular change—specifically for you to make your own meaning using the tools and techniques shared in People Are Stories-in-Progress. It is more than sixty pages long.
This pathway supports you on your own self-reflective journey.
Who knows what you might find?
The Questions That Inspired This Offering
Years ago, several readers asked me some questions about writing. All of them inspired People Are Stories-in-Progress, which answers all of them:
How do you come up with subplots?
How do you come up with a plot that all fits together – like subplots and everything?
If you wrote one book at a time, with editing and collaborating, how did you have plot points from book 1/2/3 to fit perfectly in book 4 [throughout the Ever Afters series]? I mean, take Lena’s ending for example… which idea came first? Lena’s Tale, or Lena becoming a sorcerer?
Admittedly, It took me a while to figure out the best way to answer these.
I may be slow, but I am thorough—the material here is roughly as long as a short novel like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.