trapped. I have to tell my story. My terrible wife is making me. I rise and slowly make my way to the stage. I ascend the steps and find myself standing beside Dan Kennedy. He shakes my hand and smiles, acting as if this stage is no big deal. As if standing in front of a throng of expectant New Yorkers is something we do every day. I’m a little starstruck.
As Dan begins to step aside to allow me to approach the microphone, Jenifer Hixon, the show’s producer, calls out to Dan, reminding him that he hasn’t recorded the scores for the previous storyteller yet.
Dan turns to me. “Sorry,” he says. “Wait just a minute.” He motions for me to step off the stage so he and Jenifer can record scores from the judges on a large paper chart.
Instead I remain onstage. I stumble over to the coolers along the wall and sit. I don’t want to tell my story. I don’t want to compete. I don’t want to be here at all. I want to go home and forget this stupid idea forever. But if I’m going to tell my story to this room of storytelling connoisseurs and judgmental New Yorkers, I want to do well. I don’t want to look like a fool. With this in mind, it occurs to me that spending a couple minutes onstage, getting a sense of the space and lighting and the audience, might help.
So I stay. I soak in the scenery. The height of the stage. The angle of the spotlight. The position of the audience and the microphone. I try to relax. I try to make this space my home.
Jenifer records the scores from the prior storyteller. It’s time for me to take the microphone and tell my story.
I hate this night. I despise every bit of it.
Then I begin speaking my first words into the microphone and fall instantly in love. Alone on the stage, standing before a room packed with strangers, I tell a story about learning to pole-vault in high school. I reveal my secret desire for my teammate to fail, so I could look better than he did in our teammates’ eyes. I bare my soul to that room. I tell them about the ugly truth that resided at the center of my seventeen-year-old heart. I make them laugh. I make them cheer.
When I finish, I step off the stage and return to Elysha and our wobbly table. I have no idea how I’ve done, but I know it felt great. I already want to do it again.
Dan Kennedy asks the judges for their scores. When the final score is announced, a woman sitting beside me leans over and says, “You won!”
I look at the scoreboard. She’s right. I’ve won my first Moth StorySLAM. I can’t believe it. I return to the stage for a bow. Jenifer informs me that I’m automatically entered in the next GrandSLAM championship. I have no idea what a GrandSLAM is or what she’s talking about, but I smile and thank her. I shake Dan Kennedy’s hand.
I can’t believe it. The next day I write the following blog post:
Yesterday was one of those days that I will never forget. Last night I had the honor of telling a story at one of The Moth’s StorySLAMs at the Nuyorican Poets Café in the Lower East Side. My goal was to simply be chosen to tell my story, but at the end of the night, I was fortunate enough to be named the winner of the StorySLAM.
I got home last night around 1:30, went to bed around 2:00, woke up around 5:30 to play a round of golf, and I was still walking on air. I know it sounds a little silly, but in the grand scheme of things, the birth of my daughter was probably the most important day of my life. Next comes the marriage to my wife, and then the sale of my first book, and then maybe this. Definitely this. It was that big for me.
Perhaps I’ll tell more stories in the future, and The Moth will become old hat for me. Maybe this day will recede into the past with other forgettable memories. But on this day, at this moment, I couldn’t be happier.
Little did I know how prescient those words would prove to be. Less than six years later, I’d won thirty-four Moth StorySLAMs in fifty-three attempts. Thirty-four wins is among the highest win totals in the two-decade history of The Moth. I’m also a five-time GrandSLAM champion (also one of the highest totals in Moth history).
Since that fateful night in 2011, I’ve told hundreds of stories in bars and bookstores, synagogues and churches, and theaters large and small to audiences ranging from dozens to thousands. I’ve performed throughout the United States and internationally, telling stories alongside other talented storytellers and in my own one-person shows. My stories have appeared on The Moth Radio Hour and their weekly podcasts many times and have been listened to by millions of people.
I began my storytelling career by listening to storytellers on The Moth Podcast. Today people listen to my stories on that same podcast and on the radio. I still can’t believe it.
But remember this: I didn’t go to school to become a storyteller, and I didn’t grow up in a family of storytellers. My parents were like the adults in a Peanuts television special. There was occasional mumbling from the other room through a cloud of secondhand smoke, but little more. My family didn’t communicate through story. We barely communicated at all. I grew up in a broken home with a family that had little time or inclination to fill our lives with conversation.
I didn’t dream of becoming a storyteller. As I’ve made clear, I only started telling because my friends shamed me into giving it a try. In other words, I’m not special. I was not groomed to be a storyteller from an early age. Storytelling is not a part of my DNA.
If I can do this, you can too.
But my friends were wrong about one thing. They thought I would be a good storyteller because I’ve led an unusual and challenging life. They thought that my stories of homelessness and near-death experiences and encounters with the law would make me a great performer.
In that regard, they were wrong. Terribly wrong. Fortunately for both you and me.
You need not spend time in jail or crash through a windshield or have a gun jammed against the side of your head to tell a great story. In fact the simplest stories about the smallest moments in our lives are often the most compelling.
We all have stories. You may not believe this yet, but you will. You just need to know how to find them in your everyday life and then capture them for future telling.
Let me show you how.
No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.
— Daniel Kahneman
Writing myself into existence. I think that’s what I was trying to do. And it’s cool to write a song and then have it come true.
— Ani DiFranco
It’s a human need to be told stories. The more we’re governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from, and what might be possible.
— Alan Rickman
About a year ago, a man in one of my workshops asked, “Why am I here? I don’t want to stand on stages and tell stories. I don’t want to compete in story slams. I’m not an entertainer. I don’t get it.”
It was a good question, particularly because the man in question hadn’t chosen my workshop. His wife had asked him to attend.
He wasn’t the first person to attend a workshop for this reason. “My wife told me to take your workshop” is a surprisingly common reason given by men sitting