Author: gjo13

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Royal Bison – back in action

A blessing and a curse

I’ve been making and selling hand built pottery for almost four years now, and along with the global pandemic came more time to spend playing with clay and being creative.

My favourite meme of all time, via giphy

As a self-declared introvert, I have to admit that I wasn’t upset when the local art & craft fair, the Royal Bison, announced that they would be moving the sale online for the foreseeable future. It was so much easier to list my items on the web shop and stay in my sweatpants all weekend, sleeping in and doing whatever I wanted, then packing orders on Sunday, rather than chatting with customers and smiling (sometimes awkwardly) for four to seven hours for three days in a row.

My feelings, via giphy

Time changes everything…

Fast forward almost two years and six online markets later, I could not be more excited that the Royal Bison was finally going to be hosting a market in person again! It was to be a hybrid format, with vendors being able to choose to be online, in person, or both – it would be a lot of work, but I opted for both as I really wasn’t sure what to expect. As I began to prepare my work and table set up in the weeks leading up to the sale, I realized how out of practice I was with the process, but also how much I had missed this side of selling my work. When coming up with a display and figuring out how best to show my items, a whole other part of my brain woke up, and ideas that had been percolating in the back of my mind for so many months frantically began bubbling to the surface. This visual, tactile, interpersonal side of the market experience had been neglected for so long, and I found that I couldn’t wait to put my ideas together and get to share them with other people – in real life – and see the reactions generated in real time, face to face! I wound up building a completely new display for my table (in the week before the market…) and the feeling of accomplishment and pride that I gained from this was something that I hadn’t been able to enjoy in such a long time. Check out my reel for a little BTS of the display build here!

A full heart

Being a part of the maker community here in Edmonton has allowed me to grow in so many ways over the last few years, and having the opportunity to once again share my work with human beings in person has reminded me of just how important it is to connect with people face to face. Seeing people directly in front of me touch and experience my work is like nothing else, and visiting with the other vendors – people who I don’t necessarily know well, but with whom I share so much – filled my cup in a way that I hadn’t even realized was needed. I felt such an overwhelming joy to be connected with these people and renewed passion for what I make. Our human need for physical interaction and a sense of closeness with others has become so very clear over the course of the pandemic, and it was amazing to witness the first IRL Royal Bison fair in almost two years with fresh eyes and endless gratitude, as well as a deep respect for the individuals who worked so hard to make it happen in a safe and incredibly successful way. Click on through for a sappy post about this fantastic weekend. 

If you missed the first round of the in-person Royal Bison, you can check it out this coming weekend for another great opportunity to safely shop local and support some of the incredible creatives in our city! Happy holiday shopping everyone 🙂

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Storytelling 101

Creating an engaging and impactful story isn’t always easy, whether in analog or digital format, but keeping these four points in mind can help you to formulate a plan and execute your story successfully!

Monday RUN DAY

It’s new, it’s thrilling, it’s sexy…it’s Monday RUN day! Documenting my first run of the week, this live tweet thread is a real-time account of the lead up to, and actual experience of, a non-runner’s lunch run.

Relating to your viewers

Despite the mundane topic, I wanted this thread to be relatable, suspenseful, and emotive, in order to create a compelling story. Who doesn’t dread exercise!? Will she make it through the run!? What’s going to happen next!? I crafted this thread along the lines of a thriller story like the ones we saw in our required readings; I wanted there to be some tension and suspense about what would happen next, but I also used humour to relate to readers, elicit emotion, and acknowledge the absurdity of turning such an ordinary activity into a topic worthy of being shared as a story.

Good storytelling

Using short sentences and writing how you speak lends to the authenticity of the live tweet, and it is effective in pulling the audience into the story, enticing them to keep reading. The pacing of short stories such as this one is essential to keeping readers engaged and invested in the events that are unfolding…it’s more like listening to a friend recounting an exciting incident than reading any type of literature! My story has a clear beginning (introducing the topic, telling the audience what to expect and creating anticipation with the first tweet), middle (the highs and lows of the run experience, as well as the tension created throughout), and end (completion of the run) and resolves with the protagonist having grown and changed in some way (professional runner, ready to tackle a marathon). I kept to the basic structure of the 8-point Story Arc, although with a Twitter story, I feel it’s unnecessary to introduce your protagonist and establish “stasis”. You can assume that your audience is roughly on the same page as you and jump right into the “trigger” or event that launches your story, subsequently taking them through the thrilling steps of your adventure.

Writing in this way is exciting and can be very expressive – the creativity that emerges when you are limited by word count and format is fascinating. As a writer, you must be able to very quickly reel your audience in and get them on your level – their limited point of view allows them to experience the event as you are, right now, in the moment. Short-snippet storytelling is an extremely distilled way to share your perspective on something, making it a very relatable and engaging way to connect with your audience.

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Rebecca

Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier, was recommended to me by a friend over ten years ago when I young, wild and free, and it’s still the best book I’ve read as an adult. It has the dark feel of Gothic, Bronte-esque literature with a more modern setting – a truly emotional thriller with themes that are as relevant now as they were when the book was written in 1938.

Principles of Storytelling

As all good stories are, Rebecca is universal – it follows a young woman who feels herself to be inadequate, plain, slow-witted, unremarkable, and out of place…not to assume that everyone feels this way, but I think that most of us have been there at some point in our lives. We all have deep-rooted fears about our worth and how we compare to others, and because of this, I connected deeply with the main character and felt like I understood her discomfort and insecurity throughout the novel. Because the story is related to the reader entirely by the main character’s narration, you become tangled up in her mind, feelings, and suspicions, and we question the events going on around her as she does. She is the character that we root for, because we are her; we have become unavoidably entwined with who she is and what she feels. We want her to succeed because we are connected to her. As the story unfolds, it becomes more and more evident that it is her well-being that is at stake, and even her life at one dark point. The mental turmoil that threatens the main character is dangerously relatable – we want her to make it through the story because we fear her failure deep within ourselves.

Rebecca does an excellent job of connecting the reader to both the story and the main character (whose first name we never learn, which perhaps helps to further this link) as well as laying out the purpose of the novel very early on. Despite the feelings of not knowing as we read, of being purposefully kept in the dark, we understand almost from the very beginning that the narrator needs to uncover the mystery of Rebecca and ultimately be free of her. She needs to know the truth that is being kept from her, which I think is another universal theme in the story. 

Story Spine

The narrative takes us through the basic story spine; we are introduced to the main character and her mundane routine, but one day she meets Maxim DeWinter, which leads to a series of events spanning the novel, climaxing in uncovering the truth about Rebecca as well as Maxim’s true feelings about her, and ending with the destruction of the DeWinter estate, Manderley, and the couple’s relocation abroad. Rebecca has all the components of a good, solid story, but beyond that it is all the more engaging because of the depth with which we connect to the main character. The mystery of the story, too, entices you to keep reading, because like the unnamed narrator, you are constantly guessing at what is really going on, wanting to understand, and unsure of everything. I think that these two elements together, the reader’s connection to the narrator as well as the mystery, allow you to engage with the story in a very emotional and meaningful way.

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