Every one of us has a story to tell. Some of us share stories in writing, either on blogs or in spiral-bound journals or in published, hold-in-your-hand memoirs. Others share stories through photography or through the spoken word. Some simply share stories around the dinner table, with family and friends. Others enjoy telling their story to their seat mate in the economy cabin of that Delta flight home.

I’m at the BlogHer Food conference in Austin, Texas, this weekend, and yesterday, I had the pleasure of serving on a panel called Principles of Storytelling. My co-panelists were women I’ve admired for their writing, both online and in print. Jenny Rosenstrach is the author of Dinner: A Love Story and the blog by the same name. Molly Wizenberg wrote A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, is working on a second book now, and she’s the woman behind Orangette. Rachel Matthews is a native Texan who writes the wonderful blog, A Southern Fairytale.

Rachel, Molly, me, and Jenny
(photo courtesy of Brenda of www.afarmgirlsdabbles.com)

And then there was me.

I confess, it still feels like I was the odd one out on that panel. The impostor.  Like maybe the conference organizers picked the wrong blogger by mistake and then felt bad telling me. I had a lot of fun, though, despite my awkwardness. There was a lot of good advice passed around and the questions from the audience were wonderful.

I wanted to share with you four tips on storytelling through writing. These are some of the nuggets of information that I spoke about yesterday, and that all of us on the panel seemed to agree upon. If you have tips of your own to share, please do so in the comments.

1. Read, read, and then read some more.

Read works by authors who are doing the type or style of writing you’d like to be doing. Read books – or blogs, or magazine articles, or poetry – by writers who inspire you and whose linking together of words makes your heart race.

One of my favorite authors is Stephen King. Do I want to be a writer of horror and suspense stories? Absolutely not. But, King is a master storyteller whose knack for pulling the reader into the pages of his books, right into the scenes themselves, is enviable. The Stand
is still my favorite King book of all time, the one I could read over and over again.

Neil Gaiman, a writer of science fiction and fantasy, is another author whose literary style captures my attention immediately every time I start reading one his books. The Graveyard Book was the first of his books that I read, and it’s still one of my favorites. His newest book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, comes out later this month, and it’s on my summer reading list.

These are some other books I’ve loved lately, engaging stories told by writers who know what they’re doing:

• Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
• Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings
• Amor Towle’s Rules of Civility

Great chefs don’t learn their craft in a vacuum. They develop their style of cooking by eating meals prepared by other chefs whose cooking style or skills they admire and respect. Similarly, writers learn from devouring the words of other writers.

2. Read about writing.

Nothing inspires me more to write than reading about how someone else does it. What is clear in these books is that writing is hard. Starting writing is hard. Finishing writing is hard. Publishing writing is sometimes harder. What is more clear is that we — you and me and anyone else who loves to write — are not alone.

I recommend these to you:

• Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Yes, King again. I told  you, he’s an amazing writer.
• Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. A classic and probably found on any writer’s bookshelf.
• Anne Patchett’s The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life. This is a Kindle single, not in print, but completely worth owning a Kindle for.
  

  Austin is beautiful. And very, very hot.

3. Take a writing class.

A couple of years ago, I found a coupon for an online writing class through the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. The course was six weeks long, and the syllabus covered the basics of creative writing. I signed up, and I loved it. I enjoyed reading the weekly lessons, and I liked the challenge of the homework assignments. And though it made me incredibly nervous, I even appreciated the instructor’s critiques of my work.

A writing class is a wonderful way to brush up on the basics of writing, things we all learned way back in college but may have let lapse in our current worlds of abbreviated texting and 140-character tweets and Facebook status updates. Need to know how to create a believable scene or develop a character with whom your reader will empathize? Take a writing class.

4. Write.

Of these four items, this is the hardest for me, and probably the hardest for you, too. Writing requires that I sit down and, well, write. Putting words to paper – or screen, as it were – is not easy. All too often I don’t know what to write about, or when I know what I want to say, I’m not sure the best way to say it.

So, I practice. I write here, on this blog. I write in a journal, sometimes regularly  and other times, not so regularly. I keep a notebook of ideas in my bag at all times, a place where I can jot down little nuggets of memories or phrases or other gems that I hope will inspire those words to get out of my head.

I write, and I think about writing, and I stress out about writing.

And finally, at the end of all of the agonizing, I tell my story.