Long Story Short

I continue to try to get myself “into the room” where conversations are happening, so that I may draw them. Being present and listening, deeply listening, so that I can visually capture what is said is meditative, and fun. It’s a bit like performance, and a bit like facilitation.

I do this for my own notes, and at work for workshops and other business conversations. I’m scared to do it more in public, outside of the workplace, so I want to do more of that.

It scares me so I have to do it.

-Stephanie Lazenby.

Beth LaMontagne runs Long Story Short, a Portsmouth area storytelling event. It’s described as Bare-bones storytelling live on stage. The event will be celebrating its ten year anniversary next year!

Over the years, I’ve seen friends - Charlene, Chris, and Ryan, as well as a lot of strangers tell stories at these events. Each storyteller brings their own stories, based on a theme. This time, the theme was Cold Turkey.

I reached out to Beth to see if she would be interested in having me scribe the event, to make large scale drawings of the stories. We traded emails and set the plan in place.

I scribed two of the stories. The first on was from Paul Marino. Before Paul came on stage and I started drawing, all I knew of Paul’s story was this brief description.

His story is about a major life change that brought him to a new job, new home and a new outlook when suddenly a fire strikes in the forest behind his house which threatens everything.

His story was riveting. Funny. Moving. Here’s what’s I drew from it.

The second story was told by Austin Sorette.

"Tonight’s story is based on an essay he has written for book-in-progress called “Grandpa Hockey Puck.” Like the other essays in the collection, Sorette uses humor and self-deprecation to explore life through food. His story is about a spontaneous move to California, a mysterious Thanksgiving dish, and a literal cold turkey sandwich."

Another moving, humorous, and riveting story.

You can listen to these, and all the past stories from Long Story Short in podcast form on NHPR. Note, these two stories aren’t available at the time I write this, but I am sure they’ll be there soon.

Whats next

I’d like to come back to the next Long Story Short event in December and scribe more stories. I’m also going to approach the folks at Creative Mornings, Portsmouth chapter to see if I can scribe a talk there.

I’ll keep an eye out for more opportunities and feel free to email me if you’d want me to come scribe your event!

In terms of the drawings themselves, I think my lettering has improved a lot over this last year. Next, I’m going to focus on over all layout. How things are arranged on the page. I think both of these drawings could have had better layout choices. And I should learn to draw wisteria, perhaps 😄