5.5 x 4.25 inches – storyboard page from digital storytelling field notebook

So I’m just about ready to panic, because I’m having trouble moving from the brainstorming phase of my study abroad course materials for my digital storytelling class to the phase where I make it all coherent. I’m at that familiar point in the creative process where I begin thinking I am totally incompetent and unable to actually do my job. What did they hire me for? I’m an impostor!

Fortunately I have learned to recognize this as a symptom of being right where I should be just before I do something brilliant.

It doesn’t make it any easier to get to the brilliant bit though.

I’m having trouble adapting a class I normally teach with an eye toward lots of reflection in the development and expression of a personal narrative into a class more focused on vignettes, snippets, culture/shock and travel stories without as much time for reflection and refinement. If I could explain my thoughts to someone who “gets it,” it would be much quicker for me to find the holes in what is basically the narrative of my course timeline, and clean it up into something coherent. My problem seems to lie in needing to talk things out and having no one to talk them out with. And since I’m enrolled in the online version of #ds106 Summer of Oblivion it occurs to me how utterly ridiculous that is. No one to talk to? Hel-LO!

So this is an invitation. If you’ve got an organizational mind and want to help me make sense out of the swirling chaos drifting around in my head, then I want to get on the phone or Skype and talk to you. I need a bounce board to speed up my creative process with a little illumination. Anyone want to help me distill a million wild ideas into something that shines?

[OK. I’m hitting the publish button before I talk myself out of it, dammit.]