Ira Glass on Storytelling

After watching the Fall of 08 ScadAnimate Senior Animation Short Film Projects, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about story. Looking everywhere for a story.. filling up my little book of small one sentence snips of things that could possibly be stories later...

I don't know when I'm graduating from SCAD- I have an appointment with my advisor coming up in the next 2 weeks. Since seeing the Senior Short Film projects, I was struck with the urgency of gaining a repertoire of stories- so I'm not panicking when I need one for a storyboarding project, animation, illustration, etc. Last year I found myself getting discouraged when I had an assignment due and I knew that I had ideas floating around in my head, but the unsureness of what my message should be in my drawing or what story to come up with .. actually made me become frozen and I think I lost hope in my creativity in the face of challenges that seemed bigger than me.

So, every day, I am going to make a story. It could be one sentence, It could be a page. But I'm keeping it in my book that stays in my pocket (just in case a really good one smacks into me on the bus) and by the time Senior Projects roll around, I'll have a good sized stack of stories to choose from!

That being said: Here's a nugget of wisdom, not only for animators, but for any creative person or storyteller.