Instructions on The Wandering Story say: Add to a story or start your own. It only takes a sentence.

The Description says: A collective effort. Add a sentence and pass it along. Let’s see where this story goes.

The Note: Make sure you share this page on your profile after you add to the story so that it gets passed along to your friends.

There’s no indication who is the originator of this collaborative storymaking page on Facebook. So far one sentence has evoked 42 following sentences.

It is the “exquisite corpse” of the digital age.  According to wikipedia, exquisite corpse is defined as “a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule . . . or by being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed.”  The term was coined and the technique was utilized by the Surrealists in the early 1920s as an exploration of odd  juxtapositions that was characteristic of their works.

At www.poets.org, they have rules for doing the same with poetry. They say, “participants should agree on a sentence structure beforehand. For example, each sentence in the poem could be structured ‘Adjective, Noun, Verb, Adjective, Noun’.”

When I was a kid we did the same thing with drawing (instructions here.)  You would fold a piece of paper into thirds and draw feet and legs on the bottom, fold it so all the next person saw was the “connecting” lines so they knew where to begin their torso and pass it.  The torso person would pass it on to the head and neck person, and then we would have the great unveiling. A clown’s head on a stocky body with ballerina legs.  Always good for a good laugh.

I found some great examples of drawings by the original Surrealists at the Exquisite Corpse website.  But, anyone can play this game. You don’t have to be an artist to make these drawings, you just need to jump in and draw.

Using this model for drawing and for telling stories is a lot of fun to do with children of all ages, including your grown up friends.

(Drawing from Ryan at Let’s Share: The Berkeley Blog.)

I got an email with the subject line: National Geographic Best Pictures. I don’t know if that’s true or not and I’ve seen some of these floating around the internet for a while. I picked out some that nudged my imagination into story mode.

I guess I wanted to know what was going on – is the turtle in distress? Is it just merrily swimming? Is it running away from something? What’s the story behind this expression?

Same here – lots of questions.  Did that little inch worm eat that whole leaf?  If so, is it going back for more? is it disappointed to get to the leaf only to find that another bug beat it to the meal and didn’t leave much?

I assume this is a fox that’s diving into the snow.  But could it be half a fox? If so, where’s the other half and what happened to it?

This one just lends itself to a humorous caption as does the next one.

It seems that we just can’t help but attach an anthropomorphic (human characteristics attributed to animals or other nonliving things) meaning thus turning these animal photos into some human story.

Is this a big fish with a little fish boa?  What’s going on here?

And this beautiful optical illusion where the shadows seem more real than the objects.  There’s a great premise for a story here.

Have you ever read a book that you so totally agreed with you that if felt as thought the author had somehow gotten into your head and wrote down your thoughts? One of those books that you talk back to — in a positive way.

The book that has my rapt attention right now is Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes. It is a smart, well researched book and it is a pleasure to read. This is what John de Graaf, coauthor of Affluenza has to say about it:

“Imagine women with masters degrees and PhDs who choose home over career advancement. Imagine wives (and husbands) who reject the false promise of endless paid labor to tend gardens and children and friendships. In a time when Wall Street MBAs-producing nothing of value but rewarded with million-dollar bonuses and blinded by greed-have driven our country to bankruptcy and despair, Shannon Hayes’ stories of women and men who choose simplicity, authenticity and community inspire hope. Outside the boxes of both conservatives and liberals, this book is radical thinking at its best. Read it and think.”

This is what we used to call “dropping out” in the 60′s. Just say no to corporate America and follow your heart to the simple life.  There are many of us that have done just that in small and quiet ways. Maybe not by raising and slaughtering our own goats but by choosing time over money and doing without rather than earning big bucks to buy what we think we need. Many of us are artists in various media, many live quite comfortably even though below the official “poverty level”. We don’t need 5-star hotels to have a great vacation; give us a little camper trailer and we think we are living in luxury!

Hayes says that Radical Homemakers “are learning how to create lives that honor social justice, ecological sustainability, personal creativity, true freedom and the joy of family and community.”

The story of my life includes radical homemaking and now finally someone has written a book about it. What’s the book that tells the story of your life?