The Hired Guns Blog

The storytelling community I started, SMITH Magazine, is best known for the Six-Word Memoir project, but my core philosophy of telling your story comes down to even fewer words than that: Write drunk, edit sober.

Not that you should actually be drunk (the inebriated writer is a silly, antiquated idea, among other things). Rather, you should just let the words fall out of you, however messily and spastically, whether you’re writing a memoir, a letter, a flirty email, a toast, reports for work, or your Elevator Pitch.

In my class at the Hired Guns Academy, “What’s Your Story: Master the Art of the Elevator Pitch and Harness the Power of Short-Storytelling“, we’ll spend part of our time together “writing drunk.”

What does that mean? You’ll be tossing out lots of ideas of your work story, throwing down words quickly, without worrying about the details. We’re going to “write drunk” because a blank page can be a very scary thing. Writers–who make their living filling in the blanks–know that that emptiness can be downright terrifying. But blank pages are everywhere. When you’re on an interview or trying to network at a cocktail party, the room is filled with blank pages in the form of people whose stories we don’t know. And the scariest thing in that situation is often when someone attempts to fill in someone else’s blank page with the question “So, tell me about yourself.”

We’re going to make what for many of us is the worst question ever into an opportunity to make an impression–and leave someone asking the best possible question: “So, tell me more about yourself.” As we hone your story, and make it so second nature that it’s adaptable to any situation, I’m going to ask you to write drunk, to drop any inhibitions and fears and effusively spill ideas about who you are down onto the page. Then we’ll take a step back and let the words and ideas and stories sink in–and we’ll edit like crazy.

By the time you leave the class, we’ll go from drunk to sober and back again a few times as you hone your “work story.” And since the class ends with a cocktail party, one way or another you might walk out a little tipsy. But not too tipsy: after all, you never know whom you might meet in the elevator on the way down.

[Image: Nic McPhee/flickr]